1608 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 35, NO. 7, JULY 2017
Fig. 1. The conceptual model of the NOMA-mmWave-massive-MIMO
systems.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
In this section, firstly, the NOMA-mmWave-massive-MIMO
systems model in the downlink is elaborated. We further
propose a simplified mmWave channel model by extending
the UR-SP model with AoA and express it in matrix form.
A. The NOMA-mmWave-Massive-MIMO Systems’ Model
The NOMA-mmWave-massive-MIMO systems’ model in
the downlink that focused by this study is shown in Fig. 1.
It consists of a massive MIMO BS that serving less but
multiple user terminals (with number K ). As shown here, the
transmission is carried out in the mmWave frequency with
mmWave beams. In addition, within each beam, the NOMA
encoding scheme is utilized to encode the transmit signal.
With NOMA encoding scheme, the same spectrum resource
block [13] is shared by multiple users within the same user
group (it is assumed that the NOMA users within each
frequency resource block is one user group). Among different
user groups, orthogonal frequency correlations are assumed
to isolate the inter-channel interference. The optimal power
allocation problem of NOMA-MIMO has been investigated by
prior studies [15], [39]. In this paper, we focus on the capacity
analysis of the proposed NOMA-mmWave-massive-MIMO
systems by assuming that power value is different amongst
different users with regards to the NOMA concept [27]. This
is due to the fact that the optimal power allocation study based
on the scenario that the transmission rate requirement of each
user is given beforehand [15], [39]. In addition, this capacity
expression can also be applied for the optimal power allocation
scenario while giving the transmission rate requirement of
each user and the component carrier (CC) bandwidth. The
optimal power allocation study can be done in future based
on the NOMA-mmWave-massive-MIMO system s’ model.
At the receiver side, user can make use of SIC [27], [40]
to remove the interferences from other users with higher
orders. The remaining information from low order users is
treated as interference.
1
With perfect orthogonal characteristics
among channels of different user groups, the inter-channel
interference caused by users in different groups can be ignored.
Thus co-channel interference is mainly from users in the same
group with a lower order.
With mmWave frequency in hand, much wider bandwidth
can be allocated compared with macro wave frequency used
by LTE and prior generations. It was estimated that the
CC bandwidth can be up to 1 GHz or even more with
mmWave [43]. In line with Shannon theory for achievable
transmission rate, with better channel condition, wider CC
bandwidth will yield faster rate. The 5G’s claiming rate can
be easily met with mmWave in this regard, albeit the specific
frequency allocation and usage method of mmWave in 5G
is still on discussion with international telecommunications
union-radio communication (ITU-R).
Assuming the NOMA power allocation for each user
as P
i
, i ∈[1, K ], the received signal is given by
y = H
H
x +n =
K
i=1
P
i
H
H
s +n (1)
where H ∈ C
N×K
is the channel model from N transmit
antennas to K user terminals, x ∈ C
N×1
is the transmit
information at the transmit side, which consists of the transmit
signal s
i
as well as the transmit power P
i
. In addition,
n ∈ C
K ×1
yields the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN).
Moreover, without loss of generality, it is assumed that
N ≥ K . This is due to the fact that the transmit antenna
number is usually larger than the receive antenna number in
massive MIMO systems. It is also assumed that the transmit
signal s is normalized, which means that each column of s
obeys E[s
i
]=0, and E[s
i
s
H
i
]=1.
With this model in hand, to determinate the capacity
performance of NOMA-mmWave-massive-MIMO systems,
the channel model should be set forth. Given a constant nor-
malized noise value within the channel assumption, capacity
performance is largely determined by the allocated power to
each user and the channel model [2].
B. The Proposed MmWave Channel Model
In line with prior studies from [12], [44], the mmWave
channel model with a three dimensional (3D) transmission
background has to take into consideration the channel gain,
the AoD at the transmitter, and the AoA at the receiver. Taking
an example, the mmWave channel response for the k-th user
can be given as
h
k
=
√
N
⎧
⎨
⎩
β
0
k
d(θ
0
k
)a(φ
0
k
)
1 + d
β
0
k
k
+
M
i=1
β
i
k
d(θ
i
k
)a(φ
i
k
)
1 + d
β
i
k
k
⎫
⎬
⎭
, (2)
where H =[h
1
,...,h
K
]. Besides, integer k ∈[1, K] is the
user index, and integer i ∈[1, M], the NLOS path index.
β
i
k
denotes the channel gain of user k for the i-th NLOS
1
Note that NOMA decoding order can either with regard to the user
orders [41], or with a reversed order with regard to the SNR [42]. Here in
this study, we focus on the first scheme.