Power Domain Non Orthogonal Multiple Access (PD-NOMA) is a multiple access technique that offers spectral efficiency, low latency and user fairness in 5G networks. This paper evaluates the performance of multi-user downlink PD-NOMA in suburban environments under SUI fading channels. Baseband modulated user signals with phase shifts are allocated power levels in accordance with users distance before the superposition coding is performed at the base station. A multi-level successive interference cancellation (SIC) is performed at the receivers. Bit error rate (BER) performance against signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for up to four users per cluster is compared for all the SUI models corresponding to different suburban terrains with varying vegetation densities. An upper limit on number of users per cluster that are supported at a benchmark BER and SNR values is also evaluated.

Optimal power allocation (PA) is a decisive part of the power domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA) technique. In PD-NOMA, users are served at the same time and using the same frequency band, but at differing power levels. In this paper, the optimization problem for PA is formulated with distance (d), signal-to-noise ratio ($SNR$), and foliage depth ($d_f$) constraints. A fuzzy inference system (FIS) addresses the optimization problem by allocating the optimal power factors (power levels) to each user in the vicinity of a 5G base-station (gNodeB). The proposed system incorporates a cooperative relaying technique at the near-user to assist the far-user facing signal degradation and greater path losses. A realistic 5G micro-cell is analyzed for downlink PD-NOMA where superposition coding (SC) is used at the transmitter side, a successive interference cancellation (SIC) scheme at the near-user, and a maximum ratio combining (MRC) technique at the far-user’s receiver, respectively. For both simple PD-NOMA and cooperative relaying PD-NOMA, the presented technique’s bit-error-rate (BER) performance is evaluated against various SNR values, and it is concluded that cooperative PD-NOMA outperforms simple PD-NOMA. By combining the presented FIS system with cooperation relaying, the proposed FIS method guarantees user fairness in PD-NOMA systems while also significantly improving performance.

The power domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA) scheme has gained tremendous interest with the multiple access behavior for fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication. Although the overall performance is improved through accurate power distribution among users’ signals, it depends on the user clustering strategy. Moreover, the PD-NOMA communication is not completely secured due to its broadcast nature, which is still a major problem. This paper presents a novel low-complexity short code-based technique utilized by the registered users and the 5G base station (gNodeB) for communication. By doing so, the PD-NOMA scheme is made secure from unregistered users or eavesdroppers. We proposed a three-step user clustering strategy that selects the best cluster among all the possible clusters to improve the overall performance. The proposed clustering strategy achieves a low outage probability in PD-NOMA systems. Moreover, it uses a multi-user decode and forward cooperative relaying scheme with PD-NOMA (Cop-PD-NOMA) to increase the coverage range of the gNodeB. In the multi-user Cop-PD-NOMA, the strong users (near users) are used as relay stations to aid the weak users (far users) by the decode and forward (D&F) technique. The proposed work provides a secure PD-NOMA network and the most effective user clustering approach during validation. The bit-error-rate (BER) comparisons demonstrate that multi-user cooperation outperforms single-user cooperation in Cop-PD-NOMA communication.