Channel Coding for NOMA Schemes with
A JD or SIC Receiver
Yushu Zhangl, Kewu Pengl,2, Senior Member,
1 Electronic Engineering Department, Tsinghua University
Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Beijing 100084, P. R. China
2Shenzhen City Key Laboratory of Digital TV System, Shenzhen 518057, P. R. China
Email: zhang-ys15@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn.{pengkewu.jsong}@tsinghua.edu.cn.sun-yq13@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn
Abstract-In this paper, we investigate the impact of channel
coding on two kinds of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)
schemes, either with a successive interference cancellation (SIC)
receiver or with a joint decoding (JD) receiver. Firstly, the
information-theoretic individual achievable signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) regions of SIe and JD are analyzed. Then single-user­
oriented (SV) code and multi-users-oriented (MV) code are con­
sidered for SIe and JD, and the practical individual achievable
SNR regions of SIe and JD with these two kinds of channel codes
are obtained, which provides an intuitive way to evaluate system
performance under different channel conditions and transmission
rates. Simulation results show that, the practical boundaries of
individual achievable SNR region of SIe generally He inside
the boundaries of JD, as predicted by the theoretical analysis.
Moreover, SV code, which is capacity-approaching over point-to­
point channel, performs beUer than MV code for SIe, while the
choice of channel codes for JD depends on transmission rates
and channel conditions.
Index Terms-Non-orthogonal multiple access, channel code,
successive interference cancellation, joint decoding, individual
achievable signal-to-noise ratio region
I. INTRODUCTION
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), as a promising
technology for the 5-th generation of cellular networks (5G),
has captured lots of attention for its capability of increasing
system throughput and accomrnodating massive connectivi­
ty [1], [2]. For uplink NOMA, successive interference can­
cellation (SIC) and joint decoding (JD) are two well-known
decoding techniques, which have capacity-approaching capa­
bility from the viewpoint of network information theory [3]­
[6].
In SIC, the signal of one user is decoded by treating the
signals of other users as interferences, and subtracted from the
received signals if successfully decoded. In JD, the received
signals of aB active users are jointly decoded instead of
successively decoded. Since the complexity of the optimal
maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) joint decoder is
prohibitive, iterative JD receiver [7], [8], which performs
iterative multiuser detection (MUD) and decoding, is adopted
to reduce the complexity at the receiver in practice.
Our focus in this paper is on the practical performance of
these two kinds of NOMA schemes either with SIC or with
Correspondance Author: Kewu Peng (pengkewu@tsinghua.edu.cn)
978-1-5090-4372-9/17/$3l.00 ©2017 IEEE
IEEE, Jian Songl,2, Fellow, IEEE and Yaqi Sunl
JD, which hinges largely upon the characteristics of channel
codes. For single-user transmission schemes, conventional
strong code, which is also referred to as single-user-oriented
(SU) code in this paper, is always chosen for its near-capacity
capability over point-to-point single-access channel [9], [10].
And since there is only one user being decoded at a time in
SIC, it's intuitively reasonable to think that SU code can also
provide near-capacity performance for NOMA schemes with
SIe.
However, for NOMA schemes with iterative multiuser de­
teetion (MUD) and decoding, SU code is demonstrated to face
the problem of capacity loss at the symmetrie working point
over Gaussian Gaussian multiple access channel (MAC) [11],
where users have the same received signal-to-noise ratios
(SNRs) and transmission rates. Meanwhile, a code designed
specifically for the symmetrie working point [11], [12], re­
ferred to as multi-user-oriented (MU) code in the foBowing,
shows near-capacity performance at the symmetrie working
point.
In this paper, the individual achievable SNR region [13]­
[15] of NOMA with SIC and JD over Gaussian MAC are
analyzed both theoretical and practically. With the SNRs inside
the individual achievable SNR region of a certain user, the user
can be supported with the given transmission rate regardless
of the success or failure of other users. Thus, the individual
achievable SNR region provides an intuitive way to evaluate
the performance of NOMA under different channel conditions
and transmission rates.
The theoretical individual achievable SNR regions of NO­
MA with SIC and JD are demonstrated first, then the practical
individual achievable SNR regions are abtained. SU code and
MU code are employed in NOMA schemes with SIC and JD
to analyze and compare the impact of different channel codes
on different NOMA schemes.
The rest of the paper is organized as folIows. In Seetion 11,
the channel model and NOMA schemes with SIC and JD are
described. In Seetion III, the theoretical individual achievable
SNR regions are demonstrated. Then the practical individual
achievable SNR regions of different NOMA schemes with
different kinds of channel codes are obtained and compared
in Seetion IV. Seetion V outlines the conclusions.
1599
 11. SYS T EM M O D EL
A. Channel Model
We consider an uplink NOMA system, where K users trans­
mit signals block-by-block to a single receiver. For simplicity,
we mainly focus on symmetric users, which have identical
transmission rate Rand transmission power Pt. At the trans­
mitters, the information bits of each user are independently
encoded, interleaved and then modulated to symbols. The same
constellation mapping and the same channel code are assumed
for all users, while the interleavers are different, which is the
idea of interleave-division multiple access (IDMA) [16].
The symbols of all users are transmitted simultaneously and
share the same frequency resource, and discrete-time baseband
equivalent model for a block with K active users is given as
K 1
LHkXk +Z,
Y (1)
k=l
=
Xk Hk
where and denote the transmitted complex symbol
and the complex channel gain of user k, respectively, Y
denotes the received complex symbol, and Z represents the
complex Gaussian noise with zero mean and variance of No.
The received SNR of User k over a given block is defined
as SNRk IHkI2Pt/No, and the received SNR vector is
denoted as (SN R1 , SNR2, ..., SN RK).
=
B. NOMA with SIC
A SIC receiver performs the decoding process of each user
successively. The strong user is first decoded by treating the
signals of other weaker users as Gaussian interferences, then
the successfully decoded signal is recovered and subtracted
from the received signals to facilitate the decoding processes
of the weaker users. Given a decoding order of users in SIC,
if one user cannot be decoded at a stage, the remaining users
also cannot be decoded. In this paper, all possible decoding
orders, i.e., K! orders, will be considered, if a user cannot be
decoded in any decoding order, the user is considered to fail.
Since there is only one user decoded at a time, single-user
bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative demapping and
decoding (BICM-ID) [17]-[19], which has been proved capa­
ble of approaching capacity-limit for single-user transmission,
can be adopted as coded modulation scheme for NOMA with
SIe.
C. NOMA with JD
For NOMA with JD, the received signals of all users
are decoded simultaneously at the receiver. A maximum a
posteriori probability (MAP) joint decoder, which uses the
constraints of all transmitted bits from all users over a block,
is optimal for JD. However, the computational complexity
grows exponentially with the user number and the codeword
length. As a result, an iterative JD receiver [7], [8], which
performs iterative MUD and decoding, is adopted in practical
systems. At an iterative JD receiver, the constraints of part of
the transmitted symbols from all users are considered in MUD,
and the constraints of all coded bits from a certain user are
1600
Infonnation
bits I
Infonnation
bits 2
r----------------------- ---,
1
1
1
1
1
1
Output I 1
1
Output 2 1
1
1
Channel State I
�!':��� I
______________________ _
Fig. I. System model of two-user-BlCM-ID.
considered in the corresponding individual decoding process
of the user.
Recently, several NOMA schemes with an iterative JD
receiver have been proposed. Sparse code multiple access [20]
maps several information bits to multi-dimensional sparse
codeword and adopts an iterative multi-user message-passing
algorithm for MUD. In IDMA [16] systems, an elementary
signal estimator (ESE) is proposed to simplify and enable the
chip-by-chip MUD of numerous active users.
In this paper, another scheme called multi-user BICM­
ID (MU-BICM-ID) [11], [12] is chosen as an instantiation
of NOMA with JD. MU-BICM-ID combines BICM-ID with
iterative MUD, and has been proved capable of approaching
capacity-limit at the symmetric working point over Gaussian
MAC in previous works [11], [12].
The system model of a two-user BICM-ID is shown in
Fig. 1, which consists of two ma jor parts, users' BICM
transmitters and an iterative JD receiver. At the receiver, the
symbol-by-symbol MAP multi-user detector and individual
decoder of each user are all soft-in soft-out. The decoding
procedure can be summarized as folIows. First, the multi­
user detector calculates the extrinsic information for each user
according to channel state information, received symbols and
a priori information. After de-interleaved, the output extrinsic
information from multi-user detector are sent to corresponding
decoders as a priori information. Then the decoder of each user
calculates the extrinsic information independently according to
code constraint and a priori information. Finally, the extrinsic
information from decoder of each user is fed back to multi-user
detector after interleaved. Via performing the above procedure
iteratively, the signals from two users can be decoded jointly.
 In. THEORETICAL INDIVIDUAL ACHIE VABLE SNR
REGION
In this section, we analyze theoretical individual achievable
SNR regions of SIC and JD over Gaussian MAC. There are
actually two kinds of achievable SNR regions [13], [14],
common achievable SNR region and individual achievable
SNR region. SNR vectors inside a common achievable SNR
region ensure the common success of all users, while the SNR
vectors inside an individual achievable SNR region of a certain
user only ensure the success of that user regardless of the
success or failure of other users.
For uplink NOMA, we concern more about the individual
success or outage of each user and the individual achievable
SNR region. And K=2 is assumed for simplicity. Since we
focus on symmetric users, User 1 is taken as an example in
the following discussions. The target transmission rates of two
symmetric users are both R (bit/symbol), and the received
SNRs of User 1 and Users 2 are denoted by SNR1 and
SNR2, respectively.
For JD, the individual achievable SNR region of User 1,
SJD, consists of two areas [14], SJD = SlD U S�D. The
first area SlD contains SNR vectors (SNR1,SNR2) with
which both two users can be decoded successfuBy. SlD can
{ }.
be described as
R::; IOg2(1+SNR1),
SiD= (SNR1,SNR2) R::; IOg2(1+SNR2),
2R::; IOg2(1+SNRl +SNR2)
The second area S�D contains SNR vectors with which
User 1 can be decoded successfully but User 2 fails. S�D
}
can be expressed as
(SNRl,SNR2) tJ. SlD,
{
S�D= (SNR1,SNR2) SNR1 . (3)
R::; log2(1 + ) ent blocks, the channel over one block is actually a Gaussian
I+SNR2
For SIC, the individual achievable SNR region of User 1
also consists of two areas, SSIC=SrIC u S�IC. With SNR
vectors in SrIC, User 1 can be decoded after User 2 is decoded
successfully. And with SNR vectors in S�IC, User 1 can be
decoded directIy by treating User 2 as Gaussian interference.
SrIC and S�IC are expressed as (4) and (5) respectively
SNR2 } received SNRs. Thus, individual achievable SNR region over
{
R::; 1og2(1+ ) over BF-MAC with no CSI T.
SrIC= (SNR1,SNR2) I+SNR1 ' ,
R::; 10g2(I+SNRd
{ I
S�IC= (SNR1,SNR2) R::; 10g2(1 +
1
!::�2 ) }.
The theoretical individual achievable SNR regions of User 1
with SIC and JD, at R = 1 bit/symbol, are depicted in Fig. 2.
The upper right area of ABCH and the right area of HCDE
are SlD and S�D, respectively, and the upper area of ABF and
the right area of GCDE are SrIC and S�IC, respectively. As
shown in Fig. 2, aB SNR vectors contained in SSIC are also
contained in SJD.
A i --0-' ABCH : 51 JD
5
i
: --0-' HCDE : 5/0
r
4
cr.N 3
Z
CJ)
2
H
C /}IIl---- 0---- 0----------0----------0---------.
)lIJ/
D /
o�����������������
E
o 2 4 5
Fig. 2. Boundaries of theoretical individual achievable SNR regions of User
I at R=l bit/symbol. The left area of ABCD is the individual achievable SNR
region of JD, and the upper left area of ABF and left area of BCDE are the
individual achievable SNR region of SIe.
IV. PR ACTICAL INDIVIDUAL ACHlEVABLE SNR REGION
ANALYSIS
The individual achievable SNR regions of practically coded
(2) NOMA schemes either with SIC and JD are obtained over
Gaussian MAC in this section. And the individual achievable
SNR region over Gaussian MAC provides an intuitive way to
evaluate the performance of NOMA schemes with different
received SNRs, given target transmission rates and target
BLERs for users.
For example, for block-fading MAC, where the fading states
are time-invariant over a coding block but vary between differ­
MAC, and the received SNRs of users sub ject to certain
distributions over different blocks. When there is no channel
state information at the transmitters (CSIT), time-sharing and
accurate power/rate control for each user over each block are
not applicable. It's important to analyze system performance of
NOMA schemes, given target transmission rates, with different
Gaussian MAC could help to predict the system performance
(4)
For NOMA schemes with an iterative JD receiver, User 1
fails if it cannot be decoded successfully after the given
(5)
number of iterations between MUD and channel decoding.
For NOMA schemes with SIC, User 1 fails if it cannot be
decoded at any stage of any decoding order. With a received
SNR vector inside the individual achievable SNR region of
User 1, User 1 can be supported at its target transmission
rate with its block error rate (BLER) no larger than its target
BLER.
In this paper, we consider two different kinds of channel
codes, SU code and MU code. SU code refers to conven­
tional strong code that are optimized for single-user working
1601
 JD, MU code NOMA with JD, the boundary of individual achievable SNR
, JD SU code region of MU code, i.e., the designed LDPC code, is closer
sie MU code
,
5 jI to the theoretical boundary of JD near the symmetric working
SIC, SU code
•
point, where the difference between received SNRs of two
JD, theoretical
users are not significant. However, when the SNRs are quite
4 SIC, theoretical
different, the SU code, i.e. the LTE Turbo code, performs
beuer for NOMA with JD. This difference corresponds the
cl" 3 different optimized working points of two kinds of codes. For
Z NOMA with SIC, the boundary of individual achievable SNR
Cf)
region of SU code is always closer to the theoretical boundary
2 of SIC than the boundary of MU code, which is intuitively
reasonable since only one user is decoded at a time in SIC.
Then we consider the difference between individual achiev­
able SNR regions of two kinds of NOMA schemes, with a SIC
receiver or a JD receiver. Through the theoretical analysis in
Section III, the theoretical individual achievable SNR region
2 4 5
of SIC lies inside that of JD, given the target transmission
rates. As shown in Fig. 3, the practical boundaries of SIC
schemes still generally lie inside the practical boundaries of
Fig. 3. Boundaries of theoretical and practical individual achievable SNR JD schemes with the same code, except that SIC with MU
regions of User 1 at R=! bit/symbol.
code performs a IittIe beUer than JD with MU code when the
SNR of User 2 are too low to support the transmission rate
point and shows near capacity performance over point-to-point of itself, and thus User 2 has a negative effect on the joint
single-user channel. The rate-1/2 LTE Turbo code [21] is taken decoding process of two users.
as an example of SU code. MU code is defined as the code
optimized for symmetric working point, where multiple users
V. CONCLUSIONS
have the same transmission rates and same received SNRs.
And a rate-1I2 Raptor-like LDPC code [22] is designed and In this paper, we analyze the performance of two practically
chosen as an example of MU code. The parity check matrix coded NOMA schemes, with a SIC receiver or a JD receiver.
of Raptor-like code can be represented as Theoretical individual achievable SNR regions of SIC and JD

H =
[� �]) (6)
over Gaussian MAC are derived, then the practical individual
achievable SNR regions of SIC and JD with different channel
codes are obtained and analyzed. ResuIts show that, the
where 0 is a zero matrix, I is an identity matrix, A is the
practical boundaries of individual achievable SNR region of
pre-coding matrix and B is the extension matrix from Raptor­
SIC generally lie inside the boundaries of JD, as predicted
like code perspective. By carefully designing the variable node
by the theoretical analysis. As a capacity-approaching channel
degree distributions and the check node degree distributions
code over point-to-point channel, SU code is a better choice for
of A and B, we get AA(X) 0.97x2 + 0.03x, pA(X)
= =

NOMA schemes with SIC than MU code, which is optimized

0.67x22 + 0.33x21 , AB(X) 0.12x12 + 0.18x3 + 0.7x2 ,
=

towards symmetric working points of MAC. Meanwhile, for

pB(X) 0.15x5 + 0.85x4, where >.(.) and p(.) denote the
=

NOMA schemes with JD, SU code performs beuer when

variable and check node degree distribution functions, which
are optimized via differential evolution algorithm.
The codeword length is 9600 for both rate-1I2 LTE Turbo
and the designed rate-1I2 LDPC. The maximum number of
MUD iterations is 12, and the total number of decoding
iterations is 72 for the designed LDPC and 36 for LTE Turbo.
Perfect channel state information at the receiver is assumed.
Via simulation, the boundaries of practical individual achiev­
able SNR regions of different NOMA schemes are obtained
at BLER=O.l, and the theoretical boundaries of individual
achievable SNR regions of JD and SIC are also shown as
references.
In Fig. 3, quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulation
is adopted for two users and the transmission rate R is
1 bit/symbol. First we consider the different impact of two
kinds of channel codes on practical NOMA schemes. For
the received SNRs of users are quite different, and MU
code performs beuer when the received SNRs are close, i.e.,
near the symmetric working points. Therefore, the choice
of channel codes for NOMA schemes with JD depends on
channel conditions and transmission rates.
ACKNOW LED G EMENTS
The authors would Iike to thank the Science, Technol­
ogy and Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality
(No.JCYJ20160331171115521), the National Basic Research
Program of China (973 Program) under Grant 20l2CB316000
and the Pro ject of Research on Near Space Communication
Technology Based on High AItitude Platform Station (HAPS)
(Supported by State Grid Corporation of China, SGCC).

1602
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