Energy Efficient Performance Analysis of NOMA for Wireless Down-link in Heterogeneous Networks under Imperfect SIC

In this paper, we analyze the performance of non- orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for the down-link transmission of a Base-Band Unit (BBU) pool to multiple Radio Remote Heads (RRH) serving multiple types of cells (e.g., macro, micro, pico, and even femto) in a heterogeneous cloud radio access networks (H-CRAN). Our analytic model is intended for NOMA with imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC) implementation for the wireless down-link in an H-CRAN. We conduct extensive numerical experiments to investigate the performance of the NOMA with imperfect SIC implementation taking into account power consumption levels at the remote radio head (RRH) of different cell types and front-hauling power. The numerical results reveal an interesting fact that increasing the imperfect SIC factor will degrade the energy efficiency (EE) of multi-cell cellular networks significantly.