Efficient Hybrid Transmission for Cell-Free Systems via NOMA and Multiuser Diversity

Cell-free technology is considered a pivotal advancement for next-generation mobile communications, which can effectively enhance the quality of service for user equipments (UEs) located at the cell edge. For cell-free systems, in this paper, we propose a hybrid downlink transmission method that combines non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and multiuser diversity (MUD). To evaluate the communication performance of the system, we derive closed-form expressions for both instantaneous and average sum rates of UEs using the NOMA and MUD transmission methods. Furthermore, we comprehensively investigate the spectrum efficiency of the NOMA and MUD transmission methods to provide a basis for selecting the hybrid transmission strategy. On the basis of the proposed hybrid transmission strategy, we can derive an optimal hybrid transmission strategy for the scenarios with two access points (APs) and two UEs. Particularly, we extend the aforementioned strategy to the scenarios with multiple UEs, and formulate an optimization problem to maximize the system spectrum efficiency subject to the transmission strategy and power allocation. Furthermore, we propose a low-complexity user selection strategy and power allocation algorithm to solve the problem. Numerical results demonstrate that the hybrid transmission method and power allocation strategy can achieve higher system spectrum efficiency. Our results reveal the influence of key parameters on the downlink spectrum efficiency, analytically and numerically.