Blind detection of SCMA for uplink grant-free multiple-access

Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) is a new frequency domain non-orthogonal multiple-access technique which can enable massive connectivity and grant-free transmission in wireless radio access. With SCMA, different incoming data streams are directly mapped to codewords of different multi-dimensional cookbooks, where each codeword represents a spread transmission layer. Multiple SCMA layers share the same time-frequency resources of OFDMA. The sparsity of codewords allows low complexity of multi-layer detection for excessive codeword overloading which is the key feature to enable massive connectivity. In this paper, a blind detection solution is introduced and analyzed to support massive connectivity in a SCMA-based UL grant-free multiple access. The proposed solution is based on two major components: i) blind detection of active pilots/users with reasonable complexity, and ii) blind decoding of active users' data with no knowledge of active codebook set. Different activity detection algorithms and schemes are proposed, described, and analyzed. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes in various scenarios. Our analysis and performance evaluation confirm the proposed SCMA-based blind reception solution is a promising technology to enable massive connectivity for grant-free multiple-access transmission mode in future wireless networks.