Equilibrium Problems With Equilibrium Constraints Analysis for Power Control and User Scheduling in NOMA Networks

With limited wireless resources but increasing demands for wireless applications, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been considered as a promising technology for future wireless networks. Nevertheless, it remains challenging on motivating the mobile users (MU) to join NOMA networks, scheduling MUs on the same sub-bands, reducing interference among the MUs and setting optimal transmit power in the NOMA networks. In this paper, first we consider the quantization error due to the limitation of receivers' equipments and the decoding error during the successive interference cancellation (SIC) procedure. Second, we model the resource allocation problems as the four-level equilibrium problems with equilibrium constraints (EPEC), where the wireless operator, on behalf of each MU, first predicts the utilities and assign the MU as a NOMA user (NMU) or a traditional MU (TMU). For the NMUs, the interference penalty pricing strategy of other NMUs are proposed. Based on the announced prices of all the NMUs, the sub-channel allocation is managed in either distributed or collaborative ways. According to the announced interference prices of other NMUs and the coalition results, the optimal transmit power to gain the maximum utility is considered. Through extensive simulation analysis, the superior performance obtained by using the proposed scheme is demonstrated.