α-Fair resource allocation in non-orthogonal multiple access systems

A non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system is now considered as a promising radio access technique for next-generation networks owing to its benefits, e.g. spectral efficiency improvement. Due to the successive interference cancellation order at receivers, fairness among users in NOMA may not be guaranteed. In this study, the authors focus on alpha-fair resource allocation in NOMA. The complexity of the considered problem is then analysed. In particular, the problem is shown to be convex when 0 < < 1, and polynomial-time solvable when . Finally, simulation results are provided to examine the effects of the fairness degree on the system performance and verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.