Leveraging NOMA for Enhanced Uplink Throughput in Industrial Wireless Networks over 802.11 DCF

This paper introduces NOMA-D with 802.11 DCF, a pioneering protocol that harnesses Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) to boost throughput in industrial wireless networks (IWNs) operating on the 802.11 DCF standard. NOMAD exploits NOMA’s ability to decode superimposed signals from users with different channel conditions, effectively transforming collisions into successful transmissions. This is achieved by strategically allocating power based on channel quality, enabling simultaneous transmissions on the same resource block. By implementing NOMA-D paired transmission within DCF, our analysis demonstrates that the NOMA-D approach can achieve throughput gains surpassing $20 \%$ compared to traditional 802.11 systems across most scenarios. This underscores the potential of NOMA as a promising technique for enhancing the performance of 802.11 networks.