MBM-Aided Uplink Cooperative NOMA with Hardware Impairments and Imperfect CSI

In this letter, we propose a media-based modulation (MBM)-aided uplink cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme operating under hardware impairments and imperfect channel state information (CSI). In this scheme, the signal of the far user is transmitted with conventional modulation via the best pattern created from the ON/OFF status of the radio frequency (RF) mirrors. The near user decodes the far user’s signal and transmits with the MBM technique by superposing its information. The bit error rate (BER) expressions of the proposed system for both users are derived under hardware impairments and imperfect CSI. Simulation results validate the derived BER expressions. Moreover, the proposed system is compared with systems in which the spatial modulation (SM) aided NOMA, generalized SM aided NOMA, and conventional NOMA applied at the near user. It has been shown that the proposed system is more robust to hardware impairments and imperfect CSI and outperforms these systems.