New Resource Allocation Schemes in Multi-Cell Environment Based on Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for Beyond 5G Systems

NOMA is a new and satisfactory access scheme ascending towards the upcoming age of beyond 5G systems. Although downlink NOMA has been the focal point of numerous specialists, its conduct in a multi-cell scenario where Inter-Cell Interference (ICI) is dominant is not sufficiently evaluated. In this work, we propose a combination of the Soft Frequency Reuse (SFR) pattern with a controllable throughput vs. fairness maximization metric (CTFMM) scheduler that aims to mitigate ICI and expands NOMA throughput. To be able to cope with realistic scenarios where users are not uniformly distributed in a cell, a load-adaptive approach is also proposed. Results show that ICI mitigation through the proposed schemes can accomplish gains up to 14% in terms of total system throughput and 22% in terms of user fairness.