Performance of massive MIMO-NOMA systems with low complexity group SIC receivers and low-resolution ADCs

Massive multiple-input multiple-output and non-orthogonal multiple access (MIMO-NOMA) with low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) have been widely considered for the next-generation wireless communication systems. However, the performance of the system including power-scaling law has not been well investigated for the practical low complexity receivers. Employing the additive quantization noise model, we derive asymptotic approximate expressions of the spectrum efficiency for the system with group successive interference cancellation (GSIC) receivers over Rician fading channels. Based on these approximations, we conduct a unified asymptotic analysis for the system with linear, SIC, and GSIC receivers. The analysis reveals the transmission power can be scaled by the number of antennas for the system with GSIC receivers and shows the effects of crucial parameters including the number of groups, resolution bits, and antennas on the performance. Given a quality of service, the minimum data transmission power is also calculated for each user and the corresponding approximate power allocation is derived. The asymptotic analysis and the accuracy of the power allocation approximation are then verified by simulation results. Numerical results also demonstrate that high spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency can be achieved by the system with medium-resolution ADCs and low complexity maximum ratio combining-GSIC receivers with a small number of groups.