Joint user grouping and time allocation for NOMA with wireless power transfer

Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) has recently been explored to address the challenges in 5G networks such as spectral efficiency, large number of devices, etc. Further, energy harvesting is a promising solution to address the challenges for energy efficiency in 5G networks. In this thesis, joint user grouping, power allocation, and time allocation for NOMA with RF energy harvesting is investigated. We mathematically modeled a framework to optimize user grouping, power allocation, and time allocation for energy harvesting and information transfers. The objective is to maximize data rate while satisfying the constraints on minimum data rate requirement of each user and transmit power. We adopted mesh adaptive direct search (MADS) algorithm to solve the formulated problem. The user grouping in MADS is comparable with the exhaustive search which is computationally very complex. The thesis is supported with simulation results in terms of user grouping, power allocation, user rate, and time sharing.