A QoE-Aware Resource Allocation Strategy for Multi-cell NOMA Networks

This paper investigates the resource allocation to enhance the users' quality of experience (QoE) for multi-cell non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks. An optimization problem is formulated with the objective of maximizing the sum mean opinion score (MOS) of users in the network. To solve the challenged mixed integer programming problem, we first decompose it into two subproblems. A three-dimensional (3D) matching problem is proposed for modelling the relation among users, BSs and subchannels. Then, a two-step approach is proposed to attain a suboptimal solution. Furthermore, a low complexity suboptimal approach based on successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques is developed for optimizing power allocation among users. Simulation results reveal that the proposed NOMA networks is capable of outperforming conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) networks in terms of QoE; moreover, the proposed algorithms for sum-MOS maximization can achieve significant fairness improvement against the sum-rate maximization scheme.