On the Performance of the Unified NOMA Framework for Satellite-Terrestrial Networks with Hardware Impairments

Abstract

A unified nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) framework for satellite-terrestrial network is investigated over Shadowed-Rician fading channels, which can be applied to both power domain NOMA (PD-NOMA) and code domain NOMA (CD-NOMA). Under the realistic assumption of hardware impairments (HIs) and imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC), the achievable outage probability of the paired users is analyzed first, and the closed-form expressions of exact and asymptotic outage probability are derived. Next, the ergodic sum rate is investigated in different levels of HIs and residual interference. In addition, the energy efficiency in the delay-tolerant transmission mode is studied to characterize the performance of the satellite-terrestrial network. Finally, the Monte Carlo simulation results demonstrate the accuracy of theoretical derivation and showcase the effects of a wide range of satellite channel parameters and the realistic assumption on outage probability, ergodic rate, and energy efficiency.