Multi-User Shared Access for
Internet of Things
Zhifeng Yuan, Guanghui Yu, Weimin Li, Yifei Yuan, Xinhui Wang, Jun Xu
ZTE Corporation
Shenzhen, China
{yuan.zhifeng, yu.guanghui, li.weimin6, yuan.yifei, wangxinhui, xu.jun2}@zte.com.cn
Abstract—Internet of things (IoT) is widely expected to be an
important scenario in the fifth generation (5G) wireless network.
Major challenges of IoT include the low cost of devices, low
energy consumption, low latency and the ability to support a
large number of simultaneous connections. In this article, a new
type of non-orthogonal multiple access scheme called multi-user
shared access (MUSA) is proposed to support IoT. MUSA adopts
a grant-free access strategy to simplify the access procedure
significantly and utilizes advanced code domain non-orthogonal
complex spreading to accommodate massive number of users in
the same radio resources. A family of complex sequences with
short length is chosen as spreading sequence for its ability to
enable simple and robust successive interference cancellation at
the base station side and cope with high user load. Simulation
results show that MUSA can achieve significant gain in user
overloading performance compared to orthogonal systems, while
incurring much lower control overhead.
Keywords—Internet of Things (IoT); multi-user shared access
(MUSA); non-orthogonal complex spreading; grant-free access;
user overloading
I. INTRODUCTION
Future 5G application scenarios can be grouped into two main
categories, mobile broadband (MBB) and Internet of things
(IoT). MBB is supposed to provide high data rate for services
such as online video and virtual reality while IoT is primarily
driven by machine-type-communication (MTC). MTC can be
further divided into two main types: massive machine
communication (MMC) with low data rate and MTC with low
latency and high reliability. For MMC, the network is expected
to support a massive number of devices with sparse short
message [1], which are of low cost and low power consump-
tion.
However, current 4G wireless system is unable to fulfill the
requirements of IoT. The design goal of Long Term Evolution
(LTE) is to provide high data rate communication for a relative
small number of users. To achieve high spectrum efficiency,
LTE adopts a strict scheduling and control procedure that
requires heavy signalling. For example, the uplink transmission
of each terminal needs to be scheduled and granted
individually, mostly in orthogonal radio resources [2]. In IoT,
the payload is very small and the number of connections is
huge, thus the overhead of LTE becomes significant. Such
overhead would increase the energy consumption of devices,
and the tight control mechanism makes terminal design more
978-1-5090-1698-3/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
complex and expensive. Therefore novel access schemes are
needed to support IoT in 5G.
Novel access schemes for the future wireless networks have
gained a lot of research interest recently. Non-orthogonal
multiple access (NOMA) is proposed in [3], which utilizes
near-far effect to allow multiple users to share the same radio
resources. To facilitate the successive interference cancellation
(SIC) on the receiver, the transmit power difference between
co-scheduled users needs to be significant. NOMA assumes
intricate resource scheduling and refined control signaling.
Therefore the high overhead problem of LTE still exists in
NOMA. Low density signature multiple access (LDSMA) [4]
is a special form of code division multiple access (CDMA), in
which data symbols are spread by low density spreading
sequences with only a few number of non-zero elements, and a
chip-level iterative soft-in-soft-out (SISO) multiuser decoding
(MUD) based on message passing algorithm (MPA) [5] is used
in the receiver to efficiently exploit the LDS structure. In
sparse code multiple access (SCMA) [6], data bits of each user
are mapped to a sparse code selected from a sparse codebook
and multiple users transmit their data using the same resources.
One potential issue of LDSMA and SCMA is the scalability,
since for MPA receiver, there is lack of definite overloading
performance dependence on the sparsity and the number of the
sparse code [7][8].
To address the potential issues of the aforementioned
schemes, a novel access scheme named multi-user shared
access (MUSA) is proposed. The idea behind MUSA is non-
orthogonal transmission and grant-free access. Data of each
user is spread with a family of complex spreading sequence
with short length. Signals from multiple users are superposed at
the receiver where SIC is used to cancel interference between
users. The spreading sequence is specifically designed to cope
with heavy overloading of users and to facilitate simple SIC on
the receiver side. Moreover, each user can choose its spreading
code autonomously, therefore eliminating the need of resource
coordination by base station. With grant-free access and non-
orthogonal transmission, MUSA can support a large number of
connections while minimizing signalling overhead and power
consumption at the same time.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II,
MUSA is described, together with the design of the complex
spreading code. Numerical results are provided in Section III
and the conclusion is given in Section IV.
 II. MULTI-USER SHARED ACCESS (MUSA)
A. MUSA Transmitter and Receiver Structures
Fig.1 shows the transmitter and receiver structure of the
multiple access scheme with K simultaneous users. On the
transmitter side, the data bits dk of user k are encoded by an
encoder with code rate R, generating the coded bits ck ≡
[ck(1), …, ck(N)], where N is the length of the coded bits ck,
then ck are modulated by a modulator, for example, an x-QAM
modulator, where x is the size of quadrature amplitude modula-
tion (QAM) constellation, e.g. x = 4 for quadrature phase shift
keying (QPSK), producing the modulated symbols mk ≡
[mk(1), …, mk(N/log2(x))]. After that, the spreading with a
complex spreading code sk of short length L is carried out to get
the spread symbols tk ≡ sk * mk ≡ [tk(1), …, tk(NL/log2(x))] to be
transmitted.
Fig.1 MUSA transmitter and receiver structures
On the receiver side, successive interference cancellation
(SIC) is used to decode the data bits of K simultaneous users
from the received superimposed signal:
K
r =  hk tk + n (1)
k =1
where hk is the channel coefficient for user k, n is the additive
white Gaussian noise (AWGN).
The key principle of MUSA is that non-orthogonal
complex spreading codes with short length are used by
multiple users for grant-free data transmissions on the same
resources, and SIC receiver is used to decouple the signals.
With the purpose to increase the robustness of SIC receiver,
to support higher overloading factor of users and to enable
grant-free transmission, the non-binary complex spreading
codes are used.
B. User Overloading Definition
In order to support a large number of connections, devices
can be assigned with different time, frequency, code and spatial
domains for the transmissions.
User overloading occurs if the number of accessing users is
more than the number of available resources. For MUSA, each
modulated symbol is spread by a complex spreading code of
length L to be transmitted on L time and/or frequency resources.
If the number of accessing users is K, user overloading ratio
(OR) can be defined as:
K (2)
OR =
L increase the number of available codes, e.g. M-ary with M > 2.
C. Grant-free Access
When there is a large number of users being served by a
network, grant-based transmission would cause high signalling
overhead and transmission delay, which would significantly
reduce the spectral efficiency of the transmissions.
Grant-free access can reduce the signalling overhead and
transmission latency significantly, thereby the power consump-
tion of devices can be saved. A natural way to support grant-
free access is to use signature codes, e.g. random spreading
codes. The relatively low cross-correlation between the random
spreading codes can minimize the impact of user collision and
improve the robustness of detection.
However, it is better to perform simple downlink synchro-
nization so that uplink transmission of multiple users can be
roughly synchronized at the receiver. This would reduce the
complexity of SIC receiver implementation.
D. Complex Spreading Code Design
Considering the user overloading requirement and the non-
orthogonality among accessing users, SIC or maximum likeli-
hood (ML) algorithm is needed to be utilized in the receiver.
In traditional CDMA, long pseudo-random spreading
sequences are used to distinguish different users, which have
relatively low cross-correlation and could provide a soft
capacity [9]. Long spreading codes utilized in conjunction with
SIC receiver has the ability to support high user overloading,
but the processing complexity and delay in the receiver would
increase rapidly with the increasing of the number of users. In
addition, long spreading codes would also lead to wide
time/frequency spreading of the original signal and thus high
transmission delay and high power consumption.
If quite high user overloading performance could be
achieved through some kind of short spreading codes, it would
be helpful to reduce the complexity, delay and power
consumption. Therefore, spreading codes with short length and
good user overloading performance are considered to be
designed for MUSA.
A very good option is the family of complex spreading
code, the length of which could be short, due to the design
freedom with real part and imaginary part.
One kind of complex spreading code could be generated
naturally based on the binary sequence with element 1 and -1,
as shown in Fig.2(a), the values of the real part and imaginary
part include 1 and -1, so each element of the complex
spreading code is from the set {1+i, -1+i, -1-i, 1-i} before
normalization.
As mentioned above, large number of spreading codes with
relatively low cross-correlation are needed to support large
number of grant-free access users simultaneously. The number
of available values of each element of the complex spreading
code shown in Fig.2(a) is 4. For a code length L, the number of
total available codes is 4L, for example, if the code length is 4,
the total number of available codes is 256, which may not be
enough. Thus the available value set of the real part and
imaginary part could be considered to expand to further
 0
10

-1
10

-2
10

BLER
-3
10
PN, length=4

(a) (b)
PN, length=8
PN, length=16
PN, length=32
Complex, -1, 1, length=4
-4 Complex, -1, 1, length=8
Fig.2 Elements of complex spreading code
10
Complex, -1, 1, length=16
Complex, -1, 1, length=32
Complex, -1, 0, 1, length=4
Complex, -1, 0, 1, length=8

A preferred choice is M = 3, as shown in Fig.2(b), the Complex, -1, 0,

Complex, -1, 0,
1, length=16
1, length=32

available value set of the real part and imaginary part is a 3-ary
-5
10
100% 150% 200% 250% 300% 350% 400% 450%
User Load

set including 1, 0 and -1, so each element of the complex

Fig.3 User overloading performance of MUSA with different code length in
spreading code is from the set {0, 1, 1+i, i, -1+i, -1, -1-i, -i, 1-i} AWGN channel scenario
before normalization. Based on this, 9L codes could be
generated, which may be much better for large number of users 0
10

accessing in a grant-free manner. Complex,

Complex,
-1, 0, 1, length=4
-1, 0, 1, length=8
Complex, -1, 0, 1, length=16
Monte Carlo simulations are mainly considered to evaluate -1
10 Complex, Gaussian, length=4

the actual performance of the complex spreading code in the Complex,

Complex,
Gaussian, length=8
Gaussian, length=16
following. More theoretical analyses on the code design for
grant-free transmission are worthy of attention. BLER -2
10

E. Near-Far Effect and SIC receiver -3

10
SIC receiver can take advantage of near-far effect which is
inherent to the multi-user transmission on the uplink. When
some disparity exists in the received signal to noise ratio(SNR) -4
10

between different users, SIC can be carried out more

effectively [10]. In MUSA, near-far effect would be kept,
instead of being reduced or eliminated, by using loose power
-5
10
100% 150% 200% 250% 300% 350% 400%
control mechanism, for example, open loop power control. User Load

Because of this, signaling overhead for closed-loop control Fig.4 Performance of MUSA with tri-level complex spreading code and
would be saved. random Gaussian complex spreading code

While the difference in long-term received SNR between
users tends to be narrowed when the open loop power control
is used to compensate the path loss and shadow fading.
However, due to the small scale channel fading which is not
compensated without closed-loop power control, the receiver
would still see non-even SNR between users at each time.
III. NUMERICAL RESULTS
In this section, link level simulation results and system
level simulation results are provided to illustrate the perfor-
mance of MUSA.
A. Link Level Simulation
Multi-user link level simulations are performed to evaluate
the performance of the proposed MUSA scheme. Turbo coding
with a code rate of 1/2 and QPSK modulation is used for all
users. On the receiver side, channel estimation is assumed ideal,
minimum mean square error (MMSE) based SIC algorithm is
used by MUSA for data detection and interference cancellation.
Fig.3 shows the user overloading performance of MUSA
with different code length in AWGN channel scenario. One
transmitting antenna and one receiving antenna are assumed.
Received SNR is uniformly distributed in the range of 4~20dB,
which reflects the near-far situation expected for real deploy-
ment. For performance comparison, binary pseudo-random
noise (PN) sequence, binary complex spreading code and tri-
level complex spreading code are evaluated. Spreading code of
each user is randomly generated without cross-user coordina-
tion. The target average block error rate (BLER) is 1%.
From the simulation results, it can be observed that when
the length of spreading code is more than 16, the gain in user
overloading performance tends to be small, and user over-
loading performances with different spreading codes are nearly
the same, while when the length of spreading code is less than
16, great gain can be achieved by using complex spreading
code, especially tri-level complex spreading code, relative to
binary PN sequence. We could noted that MUSA with tri-level
complex spreading code can achieve 225% user overloading
when the code length is 4, in contrast, if binary PN sequence is
used, 1% BLER cannot be achieved for code length of 4, even
if there is no overloading, and for binary complex spreading
code, the overloading ratio is merely 150%. Due to more
degree of freedom provided by tri-level complex spreading
codes, it is more likely that randomly picked sequences would
have lower cross-correlation. This helps to ensure collision free
and low the interference between users even with heavy over- So MUSA could work in a high user overloaded scenario,
loading. and the number of supporting connections of MUSA can be 4
times than LTE. Due to the channel fast fading and by using
Fig. 4 compares the performance of MUSA with tri-level the tri-level complex spreading codes, the performance of
complex spreading code and random Gaussian complex MUSA are still robust when the average SNR of users is the
spreading code of which the real part and imaginary part are same. And it is also anticipated that multiple receiving
random numbers of Gaussian distribution. The latter is antennas could improve the user overloading performance
expected to be optimal theoretically. It can be observed that the since the short spreading code is elongated in spatial domain,
performance of MUSA with tri-level complex spreading code which is equivalent to using a longer spreading code.
is very close to the performance with random Gaussian
complex spreading code, even when the code length is 4. In
addition, low complexity of implementation can be achieved B. System Level Simulation
for MUSA with simple tri-level complex spreading code. System level simulations with multi-cell network and small
packet traffic model are performed. The detailed simulation
To compare the number of connections, MUSA and LTE assumptions are described in Table I. Grant-free MUSA and
are evaluated using the same simulation assumptions in urban orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) are
macro-cell (UMa) channel scenario, and one transmitting evaluated. The data of each user in MUSA is spread over the
antenna and two uncorrelated receiving antennas are assumed. same set of 4 PRBs, while in OFDMA, it is transmitted in one
As shown in Fig.5, for MUSA, the same 4 physical resource of the 4 PRBs, which is randomly selected.
blocks (PRB) defined in LTE system [11] are used by multiple
users in a grant-free manner. Tri-level complex spreading code Fig.7 shows the packet loss rate statistics of grant-free
with length of 4 is used. For LTE, 4 users are simulated, each MUSA and grant-free OFDMA as a function of traffic load per
occupying one PRB, and MMSE receiver is used. The spectral sector. Both frequency reuse factor 1 (FR1) and frequency
efficiency in LTE simulation is the same as that for MUSA reuse factor 3 (FR3) are evaluated.
with 100% user load.
Table I. Simulation Assumptions
Fig.6 shows the BLER performance of LTE and MUSA Parameters Assumptions
with different user overloading ratios. From the simulation Network layout Hexagonal cell, 19 cells with 3 sectors per cell
results, it can be observed that the BLER performances of Carrier frequency 2GHz
MUSA do not significantly degrade even when the user over- System bandwidth 10MHz
loading ratio gets as high as 400%, and is better than the Inter-site distance 500m
performance of LTE, because the former could benefit from the Channel scenario Urban macro-cell scenario
Traffic model Small packet, size of 20bytes, inter-arrival time is a
diversity. Poisson distribution with mean value of 80ms
Scheduler Grant-free scheduler
Modulation and coding QPSK 1/2
Spreading code Tri-level complex spreading code with real part
and imaginary part coming from {-1, 0, 1},
randomly generated, code length is 4
Retransmission Not modeled
Antenna configuration SIMO, 1Tx, 2Rx, uncorrelated antennas
UE max Tx power 23dBm
Uplink power control LTE uplink power control, P0=-95dBm, alpha=1
Channel estimation Ideal
Fig.5 Simulation scenarios for MUSA and LTE Receiver MMSE-SIC for MUSA; MMSE for OFDMA
0 0
10 10
MUSA, 100% user load MUSA, FR1
MUSA, FR3
MUSA, 200% user load
OFDMA, FR1
-1 MUSA, 300% user load
10 OFDMA, FR3
MUSA, 400% user load
LTE
-1
10
-2
Packet Loss Rate

10
BLER

-3
10
-2
10

-4
10

-5 -3
10 10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5
SNR (dB) Traffic Load (packets/ms)

Fig.6 BLER performance of LTE and MUSA with different user overloading Fig.7 Packet loss rate of grant-free MUSA and grant-free OFDMA as a
ratios in UMa channel scenario function of traffic load per sector
 The traffic load per sector is obtained by configuring the
number of active users per sector. Since the inter-arrival time
of the traffic for each user is a Poisson distribution with mean
value of 80ms, the traffic load per sector could be defined as
the number of users per sector divided by the mean inter-arrival
time of the traffic, which represents the number of packets per
millisecond. When a small packet arrives, the user would
transmit in the grant-free manner, the packet is lost if the
transmission fails.
It can be observed that, for frequency reuse factor 1, grant-
free MUSA could support the traffic load of 3.5 packets/ms at
packet loss rate 10%, while grant-free OFDMA only support
the traffic load of about 1.25 packets/ms at the same packet
loss rate. Because user collision would happen in grant-free
OFDMA if two or more users select the same PRB, the packet
loss rate increases rapidly as the traffic load increases. MUSA
with large number of complex spreading codes which have
relatively low cross-correlation is more suitable for grant-free
accessing.
For frequency reuse factor 3, grant-free MUSA could
support the traffic load of 5 packets/ms at packet loss rate 1%,
which is much better than the performance of 1 packet/ms at
packet loss rate 1% with frequency reuse factor 1. It is because
that the latter experiences more serious inter-cell interference.
User collision has a large impact on the performance of grant-
free OFDMA, the improvement with frequency reuse factor 3
is less significant.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel non-orthogonal transmission scheme
called MUSA is proposed, which is suitable for grant-free
scenarios where uplink transmission can be autonomous. The
complex spreading code design is briefly described. Link-level
simulations with multiple users are performed, which
demonstrate that MUSA could achieve very high overloading
factor. System level simulations with multi-cell network and
small packet traffic model are also performed to compare the
grant-free MUSA and grant-free OFDMA, the simulation
results show that grant-free MUSA could support much higher
traffic load than grant-free OFDMA. Therefore, the MUSA
scheme can be potentially used for IoT to support massive
connected devices with low cost and low power consumption.
REFERENCES
[1] Y. Yuan and L. Zhu, “Application scenarios and enabling technologies
of 5G,” China Communications, vol. 11, no. 11, pp. 69-79, Nov. 2014.
[2] 3GPP TS36.213, 3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specifi-
cation Group Radio Access Network; Evolved Universal Terrestrial
Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical layer procedures.
[3] Y. Saito, Y. Kishiyama, A. Benjebbour, T. Nakamura, A. Li, and K.
Higuchi, “Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) for Cellular Future
Radio Access,” IEEE 77th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC
2013-Spring), pp. 1-5, June 2013.
[4] R. Hoshyar, F. P. Wathan, and R. Tafazolli, “Novel Low-Density Signa-
ture for Synchronous CDMA Systems Over AWGN Channel,” IEEE
Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 1616-1626, April
2008.
[5] F. R. Kschischang, B. J. Frey, and H. A. Loeliger, “Factor graphs and
the sum-product algorithm,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory,
vol. 47, pp. 498-519, Feb. 2001.
[6] H. Nikopour and H. Baligh, “Sparse code multiple access,” IEEE 24th
International Symposium on Personal Indoor and Mobile Radio
Communications (PIMRC), pp. 332-336, 2013.
[7] R. Razavi, R. Hoshyar, M. A. Imran, and Y. Wang, “Information
theoretic analysis of LDS scheme,” IEEE Communications Letters, vol.
15, no. 8, pp. 798-800, Aug. 2011.
[8] K. Au, L. Zhang, H. Nikopour, E. Yi, A. Bayesteh, U. Vilaipornsawai, J.
Ma, and P. Zhu, “Uplink Contention Based SCMA for 5G Radio
Access,” IEEE Globecom 2014 Workshop, pp.900-905, Dec. 2014
[9] K.S. Gilhousen, I.M. Jacobs, R. Padovani, A.J. Viterbi, L.A. Weaver Jr.,
and C.E.Wheatley III, “On the capacity of a cellular CDMA system,”
IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 303-
312, May 1991.
[10] D. Tse and P. Viswanath, Fundamentals of Wireless Communication,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 2005.
[11] 3GPP TS36.211, 3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specifi-
cation Group Radio Access Network; Evolved Universal Terrestrial
Radio Access(E-UTRA); Physical Channels and Modulation.