Comparison Study of Non-Orthogonal Multiple

Access Schemes for 5G

Bichai Wang1 , Kun Wang2 , Zhaohua Lu3 , Tian Xie1 , and Jinguo Quan4
1
Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNList),
Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2
National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center (CNCERT), Beijing, China
3
ZTE Cooperation, Shenzhen, China
4
Division of Information Science & Technology,
Shenzhen Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China
E-mail: 18810655172@163.com

Abstract—With the development of mobile Internet and Inter-
net of things (IoT), the 5th generation (5G) wireless communica-
tions will foresee explosive increase in mobile traffic. To address
challenges in 5G such as higher spectral efficiency, massive
connectivity, and lower latency, some non-orthogonal multiple
access (NOMA) schemes have been recently actively investigated,
including power-domain NOMA, multiple access with low-density
spreading (LDS), sparse code multiple access (SCMA), multi-
user shared access (MUSA), pattern division multiple access
(PDMA), etc. Different from conventional orthogonal multiple
access (OMA) schemes, NOMA can realize overloading by
introducing some controllable interferences at the cost of slightly
increased receiver complexity, which can achieve significant gains
in spectral efficiency and accommodate much more users. In
this paper, we will discuss basic principles and key features of
three typical NOMA schemes, i.e., SCMA, MUSA, and PDMA.
What’s more, their performance in terms of uplink bit error rate
(BER) will be compared. Simulation results show that in typical
Rayleigh fading channels, SCMA has the best performance, while
the BER performance of MUSA and PDMA are very close to each
other. In addition, we also analyze the performance of PDMA
using the same factor graph as SCMA, which indicates that the
performance gain of SCMA over PDMA comes from both the
difference of factor graph and the codebook optimization.
I. I NTRODUCTION
In the history of broadband multimedia communications
and broadcasting [1], lots of investigations have been done
to satisfy various requirements in practical systems. However,
with the rapid development of mobile Internet and Internet of
things (IoT), rapidly increased requirements are expected to
be satisfied in the 5th generation (5G) wireless communica-
tions [2] [3], e.g., higher spectral efficiency, massive connec-
tivity, lower latency, etc. To address these challenges, some
non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes have been
recently proposed, such as power-domain NOMA [4], multiple
access with low-density spreading (LDS) [5] [6], sparse code
multiple access (SCMA) [7]–[9], multi-user shared access
(MUSA), pattern division multiple access (PDMA) [10], and
so on. Different from conventional orthogonal multiple access
(OMA) schemes, including frequency division multiple access
(FDMA) [11], time division multiple access (TDMA), code
division multiple access (CDMA), and orthogonal frequency
division multiple access (OFDMA) [12], NOMA introduces
some controllable interferences to realize overloading at the
cost of slightly increased receiver complexity. As a result,
higher spectral efficiency and massive connectivity can be
achieved by NOMA for 5G.
Among available NOMA technologies, SCMA, MUSA, and
PDMA are three typical schemes recently proposed. In SCMA,
bit streams are directly mapped to sparse codewords, and
thus it is available to use near-optimal multi-user detection
(MUD) based on message passing algorithm (MPA) [13] with
acceptable complexity. MUSA uses low-correlation spreading
sequences at the transmitter, and successive interference can-
cellation (SIC) [14] is performed at the receiver to realize
MUD. While in PDMA, non-orthogonal patterns are designed
to maximize the diversity and minimize the overlaps of
multiple users. All of them can realize overloading by non-
orthogonal resource allocation, which can improve spectral
efficiency and accommodate much more users.
However, different NOMA schemes are individually dis-
cussed in the literature, and no work has been published to
compare their performance. This paper aims to fill in the
gap by comparing the performance of three typical NOMA
schemes under hot investigation: SCMA, MUSA, and PDMA.
Particularly, Section II will present the basic principles and key
features of SCMA, MUSA, and PDMA, respectively. Then,
in Section III, we will compare the performance of these
NOMA schemes in typical Rayleigh fading channels. Sim-
ulation results show that SCMA performs best, while MUSA
and PDMA have very similar performance. Meanwhile, we
also show that SCMA outperforms PDMA not only due to the
difference of factor graph, but also due to the optimal design
of codebooks. Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section IV.
II. T YPICAL NOMA S CHEMES
In this section, basic principles and key features of three
NOMA schemes under hot investigation, i.e., SCMA, MUSA,
and PDMA, will be discussed separately.
 [ [ [ [ [ [
A. SCMA
9DULDEOH
SCMA is an improved scheme based on LDS-OFDM that QRGHV
exploits sparse spreading sequences to realize overloading. Un-
like LDS-OFDM, bit-to-constellation mapping and spreading
with low-density signatures are combined together in SCMA,
namely, the bit streams are directly mapped to different sparse )DFWRU
codewords. Particularly, different users’ codewords are taken QRGHV
from different codebooks, which are generated by multi- \ \ \ \
dimensional constellation. By making full use of the sparsity
of codewords, at the receiver, MUD based on MPA can be
Fig. 1. Factor graph representation of MPA.
used to separate symbols with acceptable complexity. In this
subsection, system model of SCMA will be firstly discussed,
and then MUD based on MPA will be presented. where N (k) expresses the set of users whose sparse codeword
1) System model: In the uplink SCMA, different codebooks has a nonzero element at subcarrier k, namely, N (k) =
are assigned to different users. We assume that the number {j|xkj = 0}.
of codebooks or users is J, each codebook contains M 2) MUD based on MPA: MPA is the typical receiver
codewords of length K, the number of nonzero elements in algorithm of SCMA. The procedure of MPA can be explained
each codeword is N and N  K, i.e., the codewords are by the factor graph as shown in Fig. 1, which is a bipartite
sparse. We consider the case of K < J, namely, overloading graph including variable nodes and factor nodes. Particularly,
can be realized by SCMA, which accommodates the demand in SCMA, variable nodes consist of transmitted codewords
of massive connectivity in 5G. At the transmitter, log2 M bits from J users, factor nodes can be seen as the received signals
for user j are mapped to a sparse codeword from the jth over K subcarriers, and there exists an edge between a variable
codebook, and then J codewords are multiplexed over K node xj and a factor node yk if and only if xkj = 0.
shared orthogonal resources, e.g., OFDM orthogonal subcar- Message can be passed among variable nodes and factor nodes
riers [15]–[17]. The received signal on subcarrier k can be through the edges, and the marginal distribution computed for
represented by a variable node can be seen as a function of the messages
received by that node. Without loss of generality, we assume
J
 that the transmitted codewords and noise vector are identically
yk = hkj xkj + nk , (1) independently distributed (i.i.d) as well as the transmitted
j=1
codewords obey uniform distribution, then the iterative form
where xkj is the kth component of the codeword xj for user of MUD based on MPA can be represented as
j, hkj is the channel gain of user j at the kth subcarrier, (t)
 1 1
and nk is a complex-valued noise sample taken from a zero mk→j (xj ) ∝ √ exp{− 2 ||yk
2πσ 2σ
mean Gaussian distribution with variance σ 2 . We combine the {xi |i∈N (k)\j}
  (t−1)
received signals from all subcarriers, and then the received − hkj xkj ||2 } mi→k (xi ) ,
signal vector y = (y1 , y2 , · · · , yK )T can be described as i∈N (k)\j
j
J
 xkj = 0
y= diag(hj )xj + n, (2)  (4)
(t) (t−1)
j=1 mj→k (xj ) ∝ mi→j (xj ) , (5)
i∈N (j)\k
where xj = (x1j , x2j , · · · , xKj )T is the SCMA codeword of
user j, hj = (h1j , h2j , · · · , hKj )T is the channel vector for (t)
where mk→j (xj ) denotes the message transmitted from factor
the jth user, and n ∼ CN (0, σ 2 IK ) is the Gaussian noise. (t)
node yk to variable node xj at the tth iteration, mj→k (xj )
By multiplexing J users over K orthogonal resources, the
presents the message transmitted from variable node xj to
overloading factor is defined as λ = J/K.
factor node yk , and N (k)\j presents all elements in N (k)
We can see from (1) that when all xj for j = 1, · · · , J
except for j. If the maximum iteration number is T , the
are sparse codewords, each user will spread its data only
marginal probability distribution for each codeword can be
over a small number of subcarriers. As a result, the number
finally calculated by
of the superimposed signals at each subcarrier will be less  (T )
than the number of active users, which means the interference p (xj ) ∝ mk→j (xj ) . (6)
efficiently decreases among multiple users with appropriate k∈N (j)
design of sparse codewords. Then, (1) can be also rewritten
as B. MUSA

yk = hkj xkj + nk , (3) MUSA is another NOMA scheme via code domain mul-
j∈N (k) tiplexing, which can be regarded as an improved scheme of
 [Ö()
CDMA. Different from conventional CDMA, MUSA can real- 006(IRUXVHU
ize overloading by using low-correlation spreading sequences
at the transmitter. At the receiver, SIC is performed to separate
\Ö () [Ö(  )
superimposed symbols according to the received signal-to- \Ö () = \ − K () [Ö () 006(IRUXVHU
interference-plus-noise-power ratio (SINR) difference. In this
subsection, the system model and SIC receiver of MUSA will
\Ö (  ) [Ö()
be discussed in detail. \Ö ( ) = \Ö () − K( ) [Ö( ) 006(IRUXVHU
1) System model: In the uplink MUSA system, all transmit-
ted symbols of one user are multiplied with the same spreading
sequence. Of course, different spreading sequences can be \Ö ( ) [Ö(  )
also used to different symbols for the same user, which can
further obtain the benefit of interference averaging. Then, all
symbols after spreading are transmitted over the same time-
frequency resources, e.g., subcarriers of OFDM. Without loss
of generality, we assume that one user just transmits a symbol
every time, and there are K1 users and N1 subcarriers. Similar
to SCMA, overloading can be also realized by MUSA, i.e.,
K1 > N1 , which will introduce interferences among multiple
users. The received signal on subcarrier n can be represented
by
K1
yn = gn,k sn,k xk + vn , (7)
k=1
where xk is the transmitted symbol for user k, sn,k is the
nth component of the spreading sequence sk of user k, gn,k
is the channel gain of user k at the nth subcarrier, and
vn is a complex-valued noise sample taken from a zero
mean Gaussian distribution with variance σ 2 . We combine the
received signals from all subcarriers, and then the received
signal vector y = (y1 , y2 , · · · , yN1 )T can be modeled as
y = Hx + v, (8)
where, x = (x1 , x2 , · · · , xK1 )T , H is the channel matrix
of size N1 × K1 , and the element hn,k in the nth raw
and the kth column of H is equal to gn,k sn,k . Finally,
v = (v1 , v2 , · · · , vK1 )T , and v ∼ CN 0, σ 2 IN1 .
At the receiver, SIC is performed to separate superimposed
symbols according to the received SINR difference. Note
that the design principle of spreading sequences in MUSA
is to maintain low correlation, which can be generated by
pseudorandom sequences, and thus interference cancellation
capability can be improved at the receiver.
2) SIC receiver: In MUSA, SIC is used to realize MUD
at the receiver. MUD based on SIC performs interference
cancellation in multiple stages. Linear detection is used to
estimate the transmitted symbol at each stage. Particularly, we
use minimum mean square error (MMSE) in this paper. Given
the system model (8), the MMSE detector finds the transfor-
mation matrix by minimizing the mean square error between
the transmitted vector and the estimated vector x̂ =WM M SE y
as follows:
WM M SE = min E[||x − Wy||2 ], (9)
W
whose solution is
 −1 H
WM M SE = HH H + σ 2 I H , (10)
\Ö ( ) = \Ö (  ) − K ( ) [Ö( ) 006(IRUXVHU


Fig. 2. SIC receiver based on MMSE.
where H can be obtained via training pilots [18]–[20]. Then,
the SIC detection method as shown in Fig. 2 can be summa-
rized as follows.
Firstly, we calculate the SINR for each user. Users are then
sorted by the order of decreasing SINR, i.e., user with the
maximum SINR is detected at first by using MMSE, which is
x̂(1) = w(1) y, where w(1) is the first row of WM M SE after
ordering by SINR.
Secondly, the estimated interference from the first user is
subtracted from the received signal y, i.e., ŷ(1) = y−h(1) x̂(1) .
The channel vector h(1) of the first user is removed from
the channel matrix H. Then SINRs for remained users are
calculated again and the detection order is based on their
received SINRs. MMSE is used to detect the second user’s
transmitted symbol. Other users’ symbols are detected in the
same way, namely, interference cancellation, ordering by SINR
and linear detection using MMSE are performed at each stage.
C. PDMA
PDMA is a novel NOMA scheme that can be realized
in multiple domains. At the transmitter, PDMA uses non-
orthogonal patterns which are designed to maximize the di-
versity and minimize the overlaps of multiple users. Then,
multiplexing can be realized in code domain, power domain,
space domain or their combinations. Multiplexing in code
domain is similar to that in SCMA, but the number of
subcarriers connected to the same symbols in the factor graph
can be different. At the receiver, MPA is performed to realize
interference cancellation. In the case of multiplexing in power
domain, power allocation needs to be carefully considered
under the total power constraint. SIC can be also used at the re-
ceiver according to SINR difference among multiplexed users.
Multiplexing in space domain, i.e., spatial PDMA, can be
combined with the multi-antenna technique. The advantage of
spatial PDMA compared with multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO)
is that PDMA doesn’t require joint precoding to realize spatial
orthogonality, which significantly reduces system complexity.
In addition, multiple domains can be combined in PDMA to
make full use of various available wireless resources. Without
loss of generality, the performance of PDMA multiplexed in
code domain will be considered in this paper. 10
0

Consider an uplink code domain PDMA system with K2

users and N2 orthogonal subcarriers of OFDM. We assume
that K2 > N2 , i.e., the overloaded system. The system 10
í1

model of code domain PDMA is similar to that of MUSA,

but in code domain PDMA, the nonzero elements of any
spreading sequence bk for user k are equal to 1, and the

BER
í2
10
spreading matrix B = (b1 , b2 , · · · , bK2 ), which is similar
to S = (s1 , s2 , · · · , sK1 ) in MUSA, is designed with the
following principles [10]: í3 MUSA
10
• The number of groups with different number of 1’s in the PDMA
PDMA(Same factor graph with SCMA)
spreading sequence should be maximized.
SCMA
• The number of the overlapped spreading sequences which í4
10
have the same number of 1’s should be minimized. 0 5 10 15 20
SNR
Then the maximum number of supported users with N2
orthogonal subcarriers can be calculated by
      Fig. 3. BER performance comparison of SCMA, MUSA, and PDMA in
N2 N2 N2 Rayleigh fading channels.
+ + ··· + = 2N2 − 1. (11)
1 2 N2
from {−1, 0, 1}, and the design of non-orthogonal patterns
For example, spreading matrices for N2 = 2, K2 = 3, N2 = in PDMA refers to the principle in [10].
3, K2 = 7, and N2 = 4, K2 = 15 can be designed as follows: We can observe from Fig. 3 that SCMA has the best BER
  performance, while MUSA and PDMA have very similar BER
1 1 0
B2,3 = , (12) performance. This is caused by the fact that error propagation
1 0 1
⎛ ⎞ of SIC receivers has a severe effect on the system performance.
1 1 0 1 1 0 0 On the other hand, when PDMA adopts the same factor graph
B3,7 = ⎝ 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 ⎠ , (13) as SCMA, the performance of SCMA is still better than that
1 0 1 1 0 0 1 of PDMA, which indicates that the near-optimal design of
sparse codewords in SCMA is beneficial for the performance
B4,15
⎛ ⎞ improvement.
1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 00
⎜ 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 00 ⎟ .
=⎜
⎝ 1
⎟ IV. C ONCLUSIONS
1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 10 ⎠
1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 01 In this paper, we compare the performance of three typical
(14) NOMA schemes, i.e., SCMA, MUSA, and PDMA. It is found
At the receiver, MPA is performed to separate signals that SCMA has the best performance due to the near-optimal
for different users. The purpose of the design principle for design of sparse codewords together with the near-optimal
spreading matrices in code domain PDMA is to facilitate MPA receiver, while MUSA and PDMA have very similar
interference cancellation. Take the B4,15 for example, the performance. This comparison study reveals that to obtain
spreading sequence of the first user has 4 non-zero elements, better system performance for NOMA, the design of sparse
i.e., the diversity order is 4, and thus the first user’s symbol codebooks in SCMA, low-correlation spreading sequences in
is the most reliable among those of all other users. Therefore, MUSA, and non-orthogonal patterns in PDMA should be
the probability of the first user’s symbol can be quickly con- optimized in the future work. Additionally, robust receiver
verged, which will be benefit for the convergence of symbols’ with low complexity is also expected for NOMA.
probability of other users with lower diversity orders.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
III. S IMULATION R ESULTS
This work was supported by Shenzhen Visible
The uplink bit error rate (BER) performance comparison Light Communication System Key Laboratory
of SCMA, MUSA, and PDMA in Rayleigh fading channels (ZDSYS20140512114229398) and Shenzhen Peacock
is shown in Fig. 3. In addition, the performance of PDMA Plan (Grant No. 1108170036003286).
using the same factor graph with SCMA is also analyzed.
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