A Comprehensive Survey of NOMA-Based Cooperative Communication Studies for 5G Implementation

The evolution of wireless communication has shifted the world towards the modern smart networks of the future which support IoT applications. The deployment of fifth-generation (5G) is on-going and there is a prediction that explosion in the number of data users is going to rise including massive connectivity of billion applications which support the Internet of Things. This will result from the growing demand for high data rates and access to multimedia content Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme as multiple access technologies that aim to increase spectral efficiency and allow for more applications to be connected. Network operators are seeking to provide more effective, reliable, faster service. Scientific evidence has proven that Non-orthogonal multiple access performs better when incorporated with recommended wireless technologies to improve network performance, fairness, reliability, diversity and network efficiency these include cooperative relaying, massive multiple-input multiple-output MIMO, beamforming to improve signal losses, Coding for space–time, and network coding. NOMA approaches are made up of different types, such as power-domain and code-domain. This paper focuses on power-domain NOMA, which uses transmitter superposition coding and successive interference cancellation at the SIC receiver. The NOMA-based cooperative communication for 5G deployment strategies and benefits is comprehensively surveyed in this paper.