Performance of TAS/MRC in NOMA energy harvesting relay networks

Abstract

This paper investigates the outage probability (OP) performance for multiple-input multiple-output non-orthogonal multiple access (MIMO-NOMA) based energy harvesting (EH) relaying network. The base station communicates multiple users with the assistance of EH-relay. The optimal transmit antenna selection/maximal ratio combining (TAS/MRC) and sub-optimal majority-based TAS (TAS-maj)/MRC are employed in the first and second hops, respectively. We first derive the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) expressions. Then, the derived SINR expressions are used to obtain expressions of OP for each user in closed form in Nakagami-m fading channels. We finally verify the exactness of the theoretical analysis with the numerical results through Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that the outage performance improves considerably with the increased number of transmit and/or receive antennas and the enhanced channel conditions. Furthermore, regardless of the antenna’s configurations, the optimal position of the EH-based relay has to be close to the base station, while the optimal power division ratios for users vary. Moreover, the proposed TAS/MRC scheme is superior to the previous schemes, such as max–max–max and max–min–max-based MRC.