Nonorthogonal multiple access multiple input multiple output communications with harvested energy: Performance evaluation

Abstract

This paper demonstrates improved throughput and energy efficiency of wireless communications by exploiting nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA), multiple input–multiple output (MIMO), and radio frequency energy harvesting (EH) technologies. To assess the performance of NOMA MIMO communications with EH (MMe), we consider the nonlinear characteristics of EH devices and propose explicit expressions for throughput and outage probability. Based on our results, the system performance is significantly mitigated by EH nonlinearity and is considerably improved by increasing the number of antennas. Additionally, by appropriately adjusting the system parameters, our NOMA MMe innovation can avert complete outages while optimizing system performance. Moreover, the results demonstrate the superiority of the NOMA MMe over its orthogonal multiple access MMe counterparts.