Fairness-Aware Tunable Power Allocation for NOMA Systems With Imperfect SIC

This paper presents a tunable power allocation algorithm specifically for down link non-orthogonal multiple access (DL-NOMA) systems. This power allocation strategy operates by assigning power to users with aim of minimizing the maximum absolute difference between the weighted signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) between adjacent users. By using or setting a tunable weight or parameter ω, this approach can be able to achieve a balance between system throughput and user fairness. By adjusting the tunable weight parameter, the network designers or operators can be able to meet specific application requirements and system performance goals. In order to increase fairness among users, fairness antenna selection is also incorporated in the power allocation strategy. Power allocation coefficients are determined for each and every antenna available at the base station (BS). The antennas with highest sum rate are grouped together and the final selection is done using Jain’s Fairness Index (JFI), which is a widely recognized fairness metric for evaluating and promoting fairness. The combination of fairness tunable power allocation and antenna selection ensures a balanced strategy for promoting both fairness and system throughput. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm balances user fairness and system throughput, even in situations that involve imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC).