Performance Analysis of Cooperative NOMA with Dynamic Decode-and-Forward Relaying

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a promising multiple access technique, which exploits the power domain to enhance the spectral efficiency of the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a dynamic decode-and-forward (DDF) based cooperative NOMA scheme for downlink transmission to enhance the reception reliability of spatially random users. In DDF-based cooperative NOMA, the user closer to the base station decodes the superimposed mixture of the users' signals received from the base station based on partial reception, and then forwards the signal intended for the far user. To avoid the need for instantaneous channel state information at the base station, we consider random user pairing, where the users are randomly paired for NOMA transmission. Tools from point process theory are utilized to derive the outage probability of the proposed DDF-based cooperative NOMA scheme. Simulation results validate the performance analysis and demonstrate the performance gains of the proposed DDF-based cooperative NOMA scheme over conventional NOMA and cooperative NOMA.