The high-altitude platform system (HAPS) is a promising technology for providing high-speed data transmission and coverage for remote areas. Still, it suffers from unpredictable channel transmission, especially in the Rician channel. To overcome the issue in transmission, we used one channel coding strategy, namely the quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC). This study aims to evaluate the performance of power domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA), which allows multiple users to share the same spectrum in a downlink communication system from HAPS to three ground stations. We simulated the system using MATLAB simulation with different power allocation coefficients for every ground station. The simulation results showed that QC-LDPC codes can significantly lower the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) required to achieve the same bit error rate (BER) as uncoded NOMA, especially in scenarios with uneven power allocation. The average improvement of QC-LDPC over uncoded NOMA was 8.4% in SNR. However, we also observed that NOMA is prone to domino errors, where decoding errors in one ground station can propagate and degrade the performance of the subsequent ground station. Furthermore, we found that power allocation significantly impacts the system performance, while the location and power allocation of the second ground station have a minor effect. Based on these findings, we conclude that QC-LDPC can enhance system performance in scenarios with low received power and that power allocation is a crucial factor for NOMA systems with multiple ground stations.
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