A NOMA Power Allocation Method Based

on Greedy Algorithm

Yin Lu1,2(&), Shuai Chen3, Kai Mao4, and Haowei Bian5

1
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Wireless Communications, Nanjing University
of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, China
luyin@njupt.edu.cn
2
Engineering Research Center of Health Service System Based on Ubiquitous
Wireless Networks, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Ministry of Education, Nanjing 210003, China
3
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, China
4
School of Computer Science, Nanjing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Nanjing 210023, China
5
School of Computer and Software, Nanjing University of Information Science
and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

Abstract. In the existing Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access power allocation

algorithm, the iterative water-filling algorithm is a commonly used algorithm,
which has good performance but high complexity. In order to reduce the
complexity, this paper divides the power allocation problem of Non-Orthogonal
Multiple Access into two steps. Firstly, the water-filling algorithm is used to
complete the power allocation between sub-carriers, then the greedy algorithm is
used to allocate power to the superimposed users in the carrier. Many elements
in the candidate power allocation coefficient set that are impossible to be optimal
solutions are deleted by using the sum of power distribution coefficients of each
user and the product of throughput, which effectively reducing the complexity.
The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has a slightly lower
performance than the iterative water injection algorithm, but it effectively
reduces the complexity. The performance of the proposed algorithm is better
than other traditional algorithms, and a good compromise between system
performance and complexity is achieved.

Keyword: Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access
Power allocation
Iterative

water-filling
Greedy algorithm

1 Introduction

The traditional orthogonal multiple access method is weak in further improving system
performance. In order to meet these challenges, research on new types of multiple
access methods is urgent. Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) [1] is generated
under this background. As a new access method, NOMA has become the core can-
didate technology of 5G [2].
Literature [3] shows that the performance of NOMA can be improved by more than
30% compared with OMA. The core idea of NOMA is to assign different power to

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020

Q. Liang et al. (Eds.): CSPS 2019, LNEE 571, pp. 2304–2313, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9409-6_279
 A NOMA Power Allocation Method Based on Greedy Algorithm 2305

different users at the transmitting end, and at the receiving end, the successive inter-
ference cancellation technology (SIC) is generally used to detect and reconstruct
according to the difference of signal power of different users. Power allocation has
become the focus and hotspot of research [4–6]. The fixed power allocation and
fractional power allocation algorithms are studied in [7, 8]. Literature [9] shows that
assigning more power to users with larger channel gains can increase system capacity.
Literature [10] defines the PF scheduling factor, and based on the scheduling factor, the
power allocation scheme of the two-user paired NOMA system is studied. In [11], an
iterative water-filling algorithm is studied, which takes into account all users super-
imposed on the carrier in the iterative process, and its performance is very good, but the
complexity is too high.
In order to reduce the number of iterations and ensure the performance of the
system as much as possible, this paper proposes an improved algorithm. The algorithm
divides the power allocation problem of NOMA into two sub-problems: inter-carrier
and intra-carrier power allocation, and adopts different power allocation strategies.
Iterative water-filling algorithm is used for inter-carrier power allocation. For the power
allocation of the superimposed users in the carrier, considering that the greedy algo-
rithm [12] has lower complexity, this paper applies the greedy idea to realize the power
allocation of the superimposed users in each carrier.
The structure of this paper is as follows: Sect. 2 introduces the system model,
Sect. 3 introduces the NOMA power allocation algorithm proposed in this paper,
Sect. 4 compares the performance of this algorithm with the iterative water-filling
algorithm and other traditional NOMA power allocation algorithms. Section 5 sum-
marizes the full text.

2 System Model

Consider such a single-cell NOMA downlink: a base station located at the center of the
cell communicates with multiple users. Assume that the total bandwidth of the system
is W, the total number of users in the cell is M, the number of subcarriers is T, the
number of users superimposed on carrier g is kg, the system transmit power is limited,
and the total transmit power is Ptot.
Without loss of generality, we consider one of the subcarriers g, the base station
allocates different power to the superimposed users on the carrier g and transmits the
superimposed signals. The superimposed signals on the carrier g can be expressed as:

kg
X pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
fg ¼ pi;g xi;g ð1Þ
i¼1

where xi,g represents the signal transmitted by the user i superimposed on the carrier g,
and Pi,g represents the power allocated by the carrier g to the superimposed user i.
The signal received by the user m on the receiving end carrier g is:
2306 Y. Lu et al.

ym;g ¼ hm;g fg þ wm;g

kg
!
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi X pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð2Þ
¼ hm;g pm;g xm;g þ pi;g xi;g þ wm;g
i¼1;i6¼m

where hm,g and wm,g represent the channel gain and noise of the base station to the
receiving end user m, respectively.
Assume that the receiving end receives the signal using the most commonly used
SIC technology. The receiving principle of the user m using the SIC receiver is shown
in Fig. 1.

Sort
User kg signal decoding User kg signal reconstruction
...

User m+1signal decoding User m+1 signal reconstruction

User m signal decoding Complete signal reception

Fig. 1. Principle of user m using SIC reception

After receiving by SIC, the signal-to-noise ratio of user m is:

pm;g jhm;g j2
SINRm ¼ Pm1 ð3Þ
i¼1 pm;g jhm;g j2 þ wm;g

After receiving by SIC, the throughput of user m on carrier g can be expressed as:

W
Rm;g ¼ log2 ð1 þ SINRm Þ ð4Þ
T
where W and T represent the total bandwidth of the system and the number of sub-
carriers, respectively.
Further, the total throughput of the NOMA downlink can be obtained:
 A NOMA Power Allocation Method Based on Greedy Algorithm 2307

X kg
T X
R¼ Ri;g ð5Þ
g¼1 i¼1

It can be seen from Eq. (5) that different user pairing combinations and power
allocations affect the throughput of the system. This paper does not consider user
pairing, and focuses on the power allocation scheme. The power allocation problem is
divided into two sub-problems: inter-carrier power allocation and intra-carrier super-
imposed user power allocation.

3 Power Allocation Algorithm

3.1 Inter-carrier Power Allocation

For the inter-carrier power allocations, this paper draws on the water-filling idea of
[11]. In order to study the optimal solution, we obtain the objective function of the
problem from Eq. (5):

P kg
T P
max Ri;g
pi;g g¼1 i¼1
s:t: C1 : Pi;g  0; 8i; g ð6Þ
T P
P kg
C2 : Pi;g  Ptot
g¼1 i¼1

where the constraint C1 guarantees that the power allocated by each user is non-
negative, and C2 indicates that the power of the system is limited.
In [11], the iterative water-filling method is used to solve this problem, but all users
in the carrier should be considered, and the complexity is high. In order to reduce the
complexity, the water-filling method is used for inter-carrier power allocation and
greedy algorithm for intra-carrier user power allocation. To solve the optimization
problem, rewrite Eq. (6):

X
T
W Pg h2g
max log2 ð1 þ Þ
Pg
g¼1
T dg
ð7Þ
X
T
s:t: Pg  Ptot
g¼1

The Lagrangian multiplier method is used to solve the Eq. (7), and an auxiliary
function is introduced to construct the Lagrangian function:
!
X
T Pg h2g X
T
F¼ log2 1þ k Pg  Ptot ð8Þ
g¼1
dg g¼1
2308 Y. Lu et al.

For Eq. (8), we obtain the partial derivative of pg and let the partial derivative be 0
to obtain:

1 dg
Pg ¼  ð9Þ
k ln 2 h2g
!
P
T
dg
Let set b = k ln 2, we can obtain the initial water level b0 ¼ T1 Ptot þ h2g . Then
g¼1
iterate according to Eq. (9). If the power allocated by all carriers is non-negative during
the iterative process, the iteration ends. Otherwise, the water-filling level is updated to
continue the iterative process. The update of the water level for each iteration is given
by [12]:
!
1 XT
b bþl Ptot  Pg ð10Þ
Ton g¼1

where l denotes the step size of each update, and Ton denotes the number of remaining
subcarriers that have not been allocated yet.

3.2 Intra-carrier Power Allocation

It is assumed that the carrier g has been allocated a total of Pg power through the power
allocation algorithm of the previous section, and the number of users superimposed on
the carrier g is kg. We consider sorting the users on carrier g in order of increasing
power. And we assume P1,g  P2,g  …  Pkg,g, where Pi,g represents the power
finally distributed by the user i on the carrier, and the power allocation coefficient
corresponding to the user i is denoted as ai,g, then a1,g  a2,g  …  akg,g. Further, it
can be obtained that:
P
1 1  m1i¼1 ai;g
0\a1;g  ; am1;g  am;g  ð11Þ
kg kg  m þ 1

Assuming that the minimum power allocation coefficient interval is D, combined

with Eq. (11), all possible values of each power allocation coefficient can be calculated,
which are represented by sets A1, A2…Akg, respectively, and Ai is all possible of user
i power allocation coefficient. In order to simplify the calculation, we introduce the idea
of greedy algorithm, which is a kind of local optimal idea, which takes the best choice
of the current step as the optimal strategy in the calculation.
Taking the geometric mean of the superimposed user throughput on the carrier g as
the objective function, the objective function is expressed as:
 A NOMA Power Allocation Method Based on Greedy Algorithm 2309

 
a1;g ; a2;g ; . . .; akg ;g
8v ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi9
<u ukg Y
kg =
¼ arg max t Ri;g
: i¼1 ;

s:t: C1 : 0\ai;g \1; i ¼ 1; 2; . . .; kg ð12Þ

C2 : ai;g  ai þ 1;g ; i ¼ 1; 2; . . .; kg  1
kg
X
C3 : ai;g ¼ 1
i¼1

The two judgment criteria in this paper are:

(1) Power allocation coefficient criterion: the sum of the first n user power allocation
coefficients

X
n
Xn ¼ ai;g ð13Þ
i¼1

where Xkg = 1.
(2) Throughput criteria: product of the first n user throughput

a
n
Wn ¼ Ri;g ð14Þ
i¼1

The detailed steps of the algorithm are as follows:

Step 1: According to the above analysis, the power allocation coefficients are
incremented in order, and all possible values of each power allocation coefficient
are enumerated according to the formula (11), combined with the minimum power
allocation coefficient interval D, and respectively placed in the corresponding set
Ai.;
Step 2: In the user order, according to the judgment criteria, the elements in each set
that do not satisfy the condition are deleted. Taking the set An as an example,
calculate the sum of the power allocation coefficients of the first n users according to
Eq. (13) Xn = Xn−1 + an,g, and divide An with the first n − 1 sets into multiple new
sets. The divide standard is to divide the power distribution coefficient pairs of the
same Xn in A1, A2…An into the same set as elements, that is, the elements in each
set generated are a combined power coefficient, and the elements in the same set
have the same Xn. For each newly generated set, Wn = Wn−1Rn,g is calculated
according to Eq. (14), and each set retains only the element that takes Wn to the
maximum value, and the remaining elements are deleted, so that only one element is
left in each set;
Step 3: Processing each collection Ai in sequence according to Step 2. When
processing to the last set Akg, since Xkg = 1, Akg will only be divided into one set, so
2310 Y. Lu et al.

that according to the standard of Eq. (14), the only element in the set that maxi-
mizes the product throughput of each user is retained;
Step 4: The only element (power allocation coefficient combination) retained in step
3 is the final power allocation coefficient of each user.
Through the above steps, we solve the power allocation coefficient on the carrier g,
and simply multiply each coefficient by the total power divided on the carrier to obtain
the power allocated by each user.

4 Simulation and Analysis

In order to study and analyze the performance of the proposed algorithm, MATLAB is
used to simulate the algorithm, the [11] iterative water-filling algorithm and some other
traditional power allocation algorithms. The simulation parameters are shown in
Table 1.

Table 1. System simulation parameters

Parameter Value
Base station transmit power 1W
System bandwidth 1 MHz
Number of subcarriers 64
Delay spread 5 ls
Maximum doppler frequency shift 5.55 Hz
Number of users superimposed on each carrier 2
Noise power spectral density −169 dBm/Hz
Channel estimation Ideal

First, the total throughput of several algorithms as the number of users changes is
simulated, as shown in Fig. 2. It can be seen from Fig. 2 that the total throughput
performance of the proposed algorithm is slightly lower than that of the iterative water-
filling algorithm in [11], and the overall throughput performance of the proposed
algorithm is better than that of other traditional algorithms. Analyze the reason, the
algorithm adopts an iterative water-filling algorithm between carriers, and for the intra-
carrier power allocation we use a low-complexity greedy-based power allocation
algorithm. In the calculation process, the elements retained in the set have higher
throughput than the deleted elements. Therefore, better global optimal performance can
be obtained.
Then, this paper simulates the graph of the geometric mean throughput of several
algorithms as the user changes. The simulation results are shown in Fig. 3. It can be
seen from Fig. 3 that the geometric mean throughput performance of the proposed
algorithm is better than several other algorithms. Theoretically, the iterative water-
filling algorithm ensures that the total throughput of the cell is maximized, but it does
not consider that the cell edge users also obtain a large power, and thus cannot
 A NOMA Power Allocation Method Based on Greedy Algorithm 2311

Fig. 2. Comparison of total throughput of 4 algorithms

Fig. 3. Comparison of geometric average throughput of 4 algorithms

guarantee the maximum geometric average throughput of the system. In the algorithm
proposed, the relationship between user power increment is considered in power
allocation between carriers, so that cell edge users can get larger power, thus achieving
better geometric average throughput performance, which guarantees the fairness of
users to a certain extent.
2312 Y. Lu et al.

5 Conclusion

This paper divides the power allocation problem of the NOMA downlink system into
two sub-problems: inter-carrier power allocation and intra-carrier superimposed user
power allocation. An iterative water-filling algorithm is adopted for inter-carrier power
allocation, which belongs to a small range of water-filling. For the power allocation of
the superimposed users in the carrier, the greedy algorithm is used to learn and the
users are sorted by power increment. In the calculation process, many elements in the
set that are impossible to be the optimal solution are deleted, which effectively reduces
the complexity of the algorithm. The algorithm can obtain the performance close to the
iterative water-filling algorithm, and the performance is better than other traditional
power allocation algorithms.

Acknowledgements. This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of

China (No. 61271236), Major Projects of Natural Science Research of Jiangsu Provincial
Universities (No. 17KJA510004).

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