Achievable Rate Characterization of NOMA-Aided Cell-Free Massive MIMO With Imperfect Successive Interference Cancellation

This paper investigates the throughput improvement of cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems by non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for future cellular networks under stochastic access point and user locations. In this context, the node locations are modeled with Poisson point processes. The time division duplexing mode is employed, and uplink channels are estimated locally using uplink pilots. Furthermore, unique pilot sequences are used between NOMA clusters, while pilot reuse occurs within each cluster to strike a balance between the training overhead and the number of clusters. Matched-filter-based precoding is utilized for downlink transmission. The aggregate received signal is analytically characterized by deriving the moment generating function and approximations via moment matching. Then, the asymptotic achievable rates of the NOMA users are derived, thereby quantifying the adverse impact of error propagation owing to imperfect successive interference cancellation. Special scenarios with prior downlink channel state information and log-distance power control are also considered. We show that NOMA greatly increases the achievable average rate, especially under low path loss exponents and dense networks, while user fairness may be boosted by the adoption of a log-distance transmit power control scheme with proper parameter selection (i.e. lower values for the power control parameter).