Resource Allocation for Network-Coded Uplink Clustered Multi-Carrier NOMA Networks

This paper considers joint power allocation and sub-carrier assignment (J-PA-SA) in uplink clustered multi-carrier non-orthogonal multiple-access (NOMA) networks. Specifically, the goal is to maximize the network sum-rate subject to users' minimum rate requirements. A novel network-coded (NC) many-to-one subcarrier assignment scheme is proposed to improve bandwidth utilization over the conventional one-to-one subcarrier assignment. In general, the J-PA-SA problem is non-convex and NP-hard. To efficiently solve it, it is split into two sub-problems: (1) power allocation per (user cluster, subcarrier) combination, and (2) subcarrier assignment. A solution procedure is devised to efficiently solve the J-PA-SA problem for the network-coded SA scheme. Simulation results revealed that the proposed solution procedure efficiently yields the optimal network sum-rate solution, while satisfying the minimum rate requirement per user. More importantly, the proposed network-coded SA scheme is shown to be superior to the conventional SA scheme.