Unsupervised Learning Based Emission-Aware Uplink Resource Allocation Scheme for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems

The densification of wireless infrastructure to meet ever-increasing quality of service (QoS) demands, and the ever-growing number of wireless devices may lead to higher levels of electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure in the environment, in the 5G era. The possible long term health effects related to the EMF radiation are still an open debate and requires attention. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel EMF-aware resource allocation scheme based on the power domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA) and machine learning (ML) technologies for reducing the EMF exposure in the uplink of cellular systems. More specifically, we use the K-means approach (an unsupervised ML approach) to create clusters of users to be allocated together and to then strategically group and assign them on the subcarriers, based on their associated channel properties. Finding the best number of clusters in the PD-NOMA environment is a key challenge, and in this paper, we have used the elbow method in conjunction with the F-test method to effectively control the maximum number of users to be allocated at the same time per subcarrier. We have also derived an EMF-aware power allocation by formulating and solving a convex optimization problem. Based on the simulation results, our proposed ML-based strategy effectively reduces the EMF exposure, in comparison with the state-of-the-art techniques.