In this paper, we study the achievable link-layer rate, namely, effective capacity (EC), under the per-user statistical delay quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, for a downlink nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) network with M users. Specifically, the M users are assumed to be divided into multiple NOMA pairs. Conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) then is applied for inter-NOMA-pairs multiple access. Focusing on the total link-layer rate for a downlink M-user network, we prove that OMA outperforms NOMA when the transmit signalto-noise ratio (SNR) is small. On the contrary, simulation results show that NOMA prevails over OMA at high values of SNR. Aware of the importance of a two-user NOMA network, we also theoretically investigate the impact of the transmit SNR and the delay QoS requirement on the individual EC performance and the total link-layer rate for a two-user network. Specifically, for delay-constrained and delay-unconstrained users, we prove that for the user with the stronger channel condition in a twouser network, NOMA prevails over OMA when the transmit SNR is large. On the other hand, for the user with the weaker channel condition in a two-user network, it is proved that NOMA outperforms OMA when the transmit SNR is small. Furthermore, for the user with the weaker channel condition, the individual EC in NOMA is limited to a maximum value, even if the transmit SNR goes to infinity. To confirm these insightful conclusions, the closed-form expressions for the individual EC in a two-user network, by applying NOMA or OMA, are derived for both users and then confirmed using Monte Carlo simulations.

By blending the concepts of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), in this paper a novel hybrid scheme is conceived for supporting diverse services in future wireless systems. Motivating to maximize energy efficiency (EE), the joint resource management of user clustering (UC) and power allocation is investigated for the downlink hybrid NOMA systems. Under two different power consumption cases, the optimal resource allocation (Opt-RA) algorithm is developed with the help of converting the original mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem to the tractable decoupled problems. For practical implementation, the heuristic resource allocation (Heur-RA) algorithm is also proposed, in which including a lowcomplexity UC algorithm based on the candidate search-andallocation approach. Our simulation results show that, both the Opt-RA and Heur-RA algorithms achieve significantly higher EE performance than other existing algorithms. Further, the results also prove that, the hybrid NOMA conceived is able to exploit the advantages of NOMA scheme, and is superior to conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) in terms of EE, as well as achieving higher flexibility for system configuration than NOMA.

In this paper, a novel approach is introduced to study the achievable delay-guaranteed secrecy rate, by introducing the concept of the effective secrecy rate (ESR). This study focuses on the downlink of a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) network with one base station, multiple single-antenna NOMA users and an eavesdropper. Two possible eavesdropping scenarios are considered: 1) an internal, unknown, eavesdropper in a purely antagonistic network; and 2) an external eavesdropper in a network with trustworthy peers. For a purely antagonistic network with an internal eavesdropper, the only receiver with a guaranteed positive ESR is the one with the highest channel gain. A closed-form expression is obtained for the ESR at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values, showing that the strongest user's ESR in the high SNR regime approaches a constant value irrespective of the power coefficients. Furthermore, it is shown the strongest user can achieve higher ESR if it has a distinctive advantage in terms of channel gain with respect to the second strongest user. For a trustworthy NOMA network with an external eavesdropper, a lower bound and an upper bound on the ESR are proposed and investigated for an arbitrary legitimate user. For the lower bound, a closed-form expression is derived in the high SNR regime. For the upper bound, the analysis shows that if the external eavesdropper cannot attain any channel state information (CSI), the legitimate NOMA user at high SNRs can always achieve positive ESR, and the value of it depends on the power coefficients. Simulation results numerically validate the accuracy of the derived closed-form expressions and verify the analytical results given in the theorems and lemmas.Index Terms-Effective capacity, secrecy rate, NOMA, delayoutage probability.

A joint optimization problem of link-layer energy efficiency (EE) and effective capacity (EC) in a Nakagami-m fading channel under a delay-outage probability constraint and an average transmit power constraint is considered and investigated in this paper. First, a normalized multi-objective optimization problem (MOP) is formulated and transformed into a singleobjective optimization problem (SOP), by applying the weighted sum method. The formulated SOP is then proved to be continuously differentiable and strictly quasiconvex in the optimum average input power, which turns out to be a cup shape curve. Furthermore, the weighted quasiconvex tradeoff problem is solved by first using Charnes-Cooper transformation and then applying Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. The proposed optimal power allocation, which includes the optimal strategy for the link-layer EE-maximization problem and the EC-maximization problem as extreme cases, is proved to be sufficient for the Pareto optimal set of the original EE-EC MOP. Moreover, we prove that the optimum average power level monotonically decreases with the importance weight, but strictly increases with the normalization factor, the circuit power and the power amplifier efficiency. Simulation results confirm the analytical derivations and further show the effects of fading severeness and transmission power limit on the tradeoff performance.

In this paper, we study the robust beamforming design for a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) enabled system, with cooperative nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) protocol applied. A novel cooperative NOMA scheme is proposed, where the strong user with better channel conditions adopts power splitting (PS) scheme and acts as an energy-harvesting relay to transmit information to the weak user. The presence of channel uncertainties is considered and incorporated in our formulations to improve the design robustness and communication reliability. Specifically, only imperfect channel state information (CSI) is assumed to be available at the base station (BS), due to the reason that the BS is far away from both users and suffers serious feedback delay. To comprehensively address the channel uncertainties, two major design criteria are adopted, which are the outage-based constraint design and the worst-case based optimization. Then, our aim is to maximize the strong user's data rate, by optimally designing the robust transmit beamforming and PS ratio, while guaranteeing the correct decoding of the weak user. With two different channel uncertainty models respectively incorporated, the proposed formulations yield to challenging nonconvex optimization problems. For the outage-based constrained optimization, we first conservatively approximate the probabilistic constraints with the Bernstein-type inequalities, which are then globally solved by two-dimensional exhaustive search. To further reduce the complexity, an efficient low-complexity algorithm is then proposed with the aid of successive convex approximation (SCA). For the worst-case based scenario, we firstly apply semidefinite relaxation (SDR) method to relax the quadratic terms and prove the rank-one optimality. Then the nonconvex max-min optimization problem is readily transformed into convex approximations based on S-procedure and SCA. Simulation results show that for both channel uncertainty models, the proposed algorithms can converge within a few iterations, and the proposed SWIPT-enabled robust cooperative NOMA system achieves better system performance than existing protocols. Index Terms-Non-orthogonal multiple access, simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), outage-based constrained optimization, worst-case based optimization.

In this paper, the total system effective capacity (EC) maximization problem for the uplink transmission, in a multiuser multi-carrier OFDMA system, is formulated as a combinatorial integer programming problem, subject to each user's link-layer energy efficiency (EE) requirement as well as the individual's average transmission power limit. To solve this challenging problem, we first decouple it into a frequency provisioning problem and an independent multi-carrier linklayer EE-EC tradeoff problem for each user. In order to obtain the subcarrier assignment solution, a low-complexity heuristic algorithm is proposed, which not only offers close-to-optimal solutions, while serving as many users as possible, but also has a complexity linearly relating to the size of the problem. After obtaining the subcarrier assignment matrix, the multi-carrier link-layer EE-EC tradeoff problem for each user is formulated and solved by using Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. The per-user optimal power allocation strategy, which is across both frequency and time domains, is then derived. Further, we theoretically investigate the impact of the circuit power and the EE requirement factor on each user's EE level and optimal average power value. The low-complexity heuristic algorithm is then simulated to compare with the traditional exhaustive algorithm and a fair-exhaustive algorithm. Simulation results confirm our proofs and design intentions, and further show the effects of delay quality-of-service (QoS) exponent, the total number of users and the number of subcarriers on the system tradeoff performance. Index Terms-Link-layer energy-rate tradeoff, delay-outage probability, effective capacity, energy efficiency. I. INTRODUCTION Green communication networks, which not only emphasize on spectrum efficiency (SE), but also promise high energy efficiency (EE), have become imperative needs of future communication systems. However, by nature, EE and SE could require conflicting design approaches. From the informationtheoretic point of view, the EE-SE tradeoff problem in a downlink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) network was analyzed in [2], in which the impact of the channel power gain and the circuit power on the EE-SE relation was discussed. Considering the cognitive radio networks, a multi-objective optimization was formulated in [3], in which the ergodic capacity was maximized and the total

In this paper, we study the performance of an uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) network under statistical quality of service (QoS) delay constraints, captured through each user's effective capacity (EC). We first propose novel closed-form expressions for the EC in a two-user NOMA network and show that in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region, the "strong" NOMA user, referred to as U2, has a limited EC, assuming the same delay constraint as the "weak" user, referred to as U1. We demonstrate that for the weak user U1, OMA and NOMA have comparable performance at low transmit SNRs, while NOMA outperforms OMA in terms of EC at high SNRs. On the other hand, for the strong user U2, NOMA achieves higher EC than OMA at small SNRs, while OMA becomes more beneficial at high SNRs. Furthermore, we show that at high transmit SNRs, irrespective of whether the application is delay tolerant, or not, the performance gains of NOMA over OMA for U1, and OMA over NOMA for U2 remain unchanged. When the delay QoS of one user is fixed, the performance gap between NOMA and OMA in terms of total EC increases with decreasing statistical delay QoS constraints for the other user. Next, by introducing pairing, we show that NOMA with user-pairing outperforms OMA, in terms of total uplink EC. The best pairing strategies are given in the cases of four and six users NOMA, raising once again the importance of power allocation in the optimization of NOMA's performance. Index Terms-Beyond 5G (B5G), effective capacity, low latency, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), quality of service (QoS), user-pairing.

A device-to-device (D2D) ultra reliable low latency communications (URLLC) network is investigated in this paper. Specifically, a D2D transmitter opportunistically accesses the radio resource provided by a cellular network and directly transmits short packets to its destination. A novel performance metric is adopted for finite block-length code. We quantify the maximum achievable rate for the D2D network, subject to a probabilistic interference power constraint based on imperfect channel state information (CSI). First, we perform a convexity analysis which reveals that the finite block-length rate for the D2D pair in short-packet transmission is not always concave. To address this issue, we propose two effective resource allocation schemes using the successive convex approximation (SCA)-based iterative algorithm. To gain more insights, we exploit the monotonicity of the average finite block-length rate. By capitalizing on this property, an optimal power control policy is proposed, followed by closed-form expressions and approximations for the optimal average power and the maximum achievable average rate in the finite block-length regime. Numerical results are provided to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed resource allocation schemes and validate the accuracy of the derived theoretical results.Index Terms-Finite block-length codes, URLLC, average achievable rate, performance analysis, optimal power allocation.