Flexible Delay-Doppler Domain Multiple Access for Massive Connectivity With High Mobility

Beyond 5G mobile networks are required to support the ultra-reliable data transmission with massive connectivity under high-mobility scenarios, where the delay-Doppler domain multiple access (DDMA) has been regarded as one of the potential candidates to avoid the severe performance degradation brought by double-dispersive channels. However, existing DDMA transceiver designs heavily rely on the shared codebooks or large guard space among user equipments (UEs), which restricts the flexibility, complexity, and spectral efficiency significantly. In this paper, we first propose the Zadoff-Chu training sequences-based frame structure and an element-wise iterative successive interference cancellation (SIC)-maximal ratio combining (MRC) detector for single-user transmission, which serves as the basis of flexible resource allocation in the delay-Doppler (DD) domain. The discussion is then extended to the MU downlink scenario, where rate splitting is adopted to effectively balance the noise and interference at the UE side to improve the bit error rate performance. For MU uplink cases, a non-orthogonal pilots-based iterative SIC-least square channel estimator is developed to promote the spectral efficiency while the iterative SIC-MRC detector is also provided. Simulation results demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed DDMA scheme under typical DDMA patterns without guard space between UEs.