Wireless Personal Communications

[Link]

Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple

Access (NOMA) Systems

Bathula Siva Kumar Reddy1 · Kiran Mannem2 · K. Jamal2

Accepted: 4 February 2021

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
This paper focuses primarily on the study of the implementation of Non-orthogonal mul-
tiple access (NOMA) systems on Software defined radio (SDR) platforms, since NOMA
has been recognized as a key enabling technology for the fifth generation (5G) wireless
networks. A comprehensive review of the original birth, the latest trends, and the future
research directions of NOMA is given in this paper. Specifically, several Successive Inter-
ference Cancellation (SIC) receivers are provided with mathematical analysis, such as the
Ideal SIC receiver, Symbol-level SIC receiver, Codeword-level SIC receiver and Log like-
lihood ratio (LLR) based receivers. Furthermore, the bit error rate of two users’ signals is
analyzed by implementing the NOMA system with and without the SIC using GNU Radio
software. In addition, the performance of orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and NOMA
systems is compared in terms of rate pairs (throughput), spectral efficiency and energy effi-
ciency. Finally, the results reveal that the NOMA system performs better than OMA sys-
tems and it will be highlighted that SDR is a flexible platform to implement and test future
wireless technologies.

Keywords GNU radio · NOMA · OFDMA · SDR · USRP

Abbreviations
3GPP 3Rd Generation Partnership Project
ACM Adaptive coded modulation
ADC Analog to digital converter
AWGN Additive white Gaussian noise
BER Bit error rate
BTS Base station
CCSDS Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS)
CDMA Code-division multiple access
CSI Channel state information

* Bathula Siva Kumar Reddy

bsivakumar100@[Link]
1
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, CMR Engineering College,
Hyderabad, Telangana 501401, India
2
Department of ECE, Gokaraju Rangaraju Institute of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad,
Telangana 500090, India

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Vol.:(0123456789)
 B. S. K. Reddy et al.

DAC Digital to analog converter

EE Energy efficiency
FDMA Frequency division multiple access
GNU Radio A humorous recursive acronym meaning ‘GNU’s not Unix
GSM Global system for mobile
IHG-RA Interference hypergraph-based resource allocation
LDS-CDMA Low-density spreading CDMA
LLR Log likelihood ratio
LTE Long term evolution
MUSA Multi-user shared access
NOMA Non-orthogonal multiple access
OFDMA Orthogonal frequency division multiple access
OMA Orthogonal multiple access
OAI Open Air Interface
PDMA Pattern division multiple access
SIC Successive interference cancellation
SDR Software defined radio
SE Spectral efficiency
SCMA Sparse code multiple access
SDMA Spatial division multiple access
SM Spatial modulation
SNR Signal to noise ratio
TDMA Time-division multiple access
USRP Universal software radio peripheral
V2X Vehicle-to-everything

1 Introduction

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has subsequently become an emerging multiple

access technique for the improvement of spectrum efficiency (SE), energy efficiency (EE),
latency and device capability for future wireless technologies [1, 2]. Radio access tech-
nologies for cellular mobile communications are typically characterized by multiple access
schemes. NOMA is one of multiple access techniques in which multiple users can commu-
nicate concurrently through the sharing of a limited wireless resource with each other. In
order to prevent intracell interference, modern wireless communication systems have used
orthogonal multiple access (OMA) strategies where users orthogonally share resources.
These techniques include Frequency division multiple access (FDMA) for 1G [3], Time-
division multiple access (TDMA) for 2G [4], Code-division multiple access (CDMA)
for 3G [5], Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) for 4G [6, 7] and
the sharing of various resources (time, frequency and power) by different users for each
technique.
Currently, OMA techniques are achieving better throughput compared to conventional
methods, however upcoming generations require very high spectrum efficiency, system
capacity and energy efficiency to handle all kinds of multimedia applications. Retrieving
the multiple users’ information with low complexity is possible in OMA techniques, but
the number of served users depends on the available orthogonal resources which is a major
disadvantage. Therefore, most of the researchers started working on NOMA technique

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Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple Access…

and compared the performance of NOMA with other multiple access techniques, where
NOMA technique achieved a better performance compared to OMA [8].
All users are distributed in the power domain in the NOMA technique and all have com-
plete access to the resources (time and frequency). In NOMA, separate power is assigned
to all input users based on their distance from the base station and combined together as a
superimposed signal prior to transmission, called superposition coding [9]. On the receiver
side, multiple receivers are used to distinguish users depending on the power by cancelling
the noise and that is called Successive interference cancellation (SIC) method [10].
Refic et al., compared OMA and NOMA in terms of rate pairs, spectral efficiency and
energy efficiency in which NOMA achieved a significant improvement than OMA system
[8]. The NOMA offers better improvements in various parameters such as spectral effi-
ciency (SE), cell-edge throughput, and relaxed channel feedback and transmission latency.
The NOMA is broadly divided into two categories such as power-domain and code-
domain NOMA. Unlike CDMA, Code-domain NOMA uses user-specific spreading
sequences such as sparse sequences or non-orthogonal cross-correlation sequences. Fur-
ther, code-domain NOMA is classified into a few different classes such as Low- density
spreading CDMA (LDS-CDMA) [11, 12], Low-density spreading-based orthogonal fre-
quency division multiplexing (LDS-OFDM) [13, 14], and Sparse code multiple access
(SCMA) [15, 16]. In addition, some other multiple access techniques which are similar
to NOMA are proposed in the literature such as Pattern division multiple access (PDMA)
[17] and Spatial division multiple access (SDMA) [18]. The conventional OFDM-based
Long term evolution (LTE) network faces congestion issues due to its low efficiency of
orthogonal access, that results in significant access delay and posing a great challenge
especially to safety–critical applications to support Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) services.
Therefore, NOMA has been proposed for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
LTE and, due to its substantial spectral efficiency gain over traditional orthogonal multiple
access techniques, is expected to be an integral component of 5G mobile networks.
Vehicles will be an integral part of modern-day communications, ensuring that ultra-
reliable and low latency transmissions enable pervasive connectivity. Therefore, research-
ers have begun to take a shot at implementing NOMA in device-to-device (D2D)-enhanced
networks of vehicles to-everything (V2X) networks [19–21]. In order to model the interfer-
ence relationships between different communication groups, Chen et al. proposed an Inter-
ference hypergraph-based resource allocation (IHG-RA) scheme with a cluster coloring
algorithm [22]. The results of the simulation showed that the performance of the network
through IHG-RA with NOMA is much higher than that of the NOMA-free system when
vehicle traffic is not very heavy and the NOMA-integrated network has shown greater sta-
bility in achieving high network performance. Zuoyin et al., investigated the distributed
Vehicle to vehicle (V2V) for Connected autonomous vehicles (CAV), which not only
allows broadcast but also multicast/unicast communications. In order to deal with CAV
traffic patterns that are different from those in conventional connected vehicle applications,
the power domain NOMA is used [23]. From the last few years, there is an exponential
growth in the deployment of 5G based test beds across the globe with an intend to decrease
the latency for different applications [24].
In our contribution, the power domain NOMA with two users’ data using software
defined radio (SDR) with the help of GNU Radio is implemented and analyzed. To the best
of authors’ knowledge, most of the survey papers presented about NOMA and SDR sepa-
rately, however, this paper presents a detailed survey about the implementation of NOMA
techniques on SDR platform and the major challenges required to implement NOMA. The
OMA and NOMA systems are analyzed in terms of rate pairs, energy efficiency, spectral

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 B. S. K. Reddy et al.

efficiency, channel gains and bit error rate. Moreover, the major research works done
during 2017 to 2020 is presented in brief detail and references also provided for further
analysis.
A radio is a system that transfers information from one point to another where analog or
digital information, including wired or wireless communication. Mostly, hardware radios
with drawbacks such as expense, complexity, reliability, reconfiguration, etc. were in use
until 1990. In addition, hardware radios are limited to handling one or two waveforms and
it is also not possible to communicate with various types of hardware radios between two
groups of people. In order to avoid these problems, Mr Joseph Mitola introduced the term
‘Software Radio’ in 1991 while reducing complexity, expense, etc. [25]. ’Software defined
radio (SDR)’ is the ideal case for a software radio in which the analog to digital converter/
digital to analog converter (ADC/DAC) is placed next to the antenna. SDR is a radio that
implements most of the hardware features in software rather than hardware, resulting in
simpler setup, more reliability, low cost and complexity [26]. Using software instead of a
full hardware replacement, it is possible to update the device with an air interface protocol,
frequency band and features of the system. The key motivation behind this SDR is how a
radio waveform can be flexibly reprogrammed or reconfigured without altering the hard-
ware through changing software by using a common platform. The SDR functional block
diagram is shown in Fig. 1, where the incoming high frequency (Radio Frequency (RF))
signal is transformed by Universal software radio peripheral (USRP) hardware into a low-
pass (baseband) signal and that signal is transmitted to the PC installed by GNU Radio via
Ethernet cable for further processing. Different daughter boards are available in the market
as per the user operating frequency range.
So far, point-to-point NOMA has been studied extensively in [27–31]. For achieving
higher system rates, the authors in [27] proposed uplink NOMA transmission scheme.
When the target rate of users is determined by its Quality of service (QoS), the outage
probability is an important metric for performance evaluation. The mathematical analysis
of outage probability with latest uplink and downlink control protocol is presented in [28,
29], respectively. The multiple users transmission mode with the minimum bit error ratio
criterion for NOMA was proposed in [32]. The major research works done during 2017 to
2020 on SDR and NOMA are presented in Tables 1 and 2, respectively.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Sect. 2 describes various SIC receivers for
two users such as Ideal SIC receiver, Symbol-level SIC receiver, Codeword-level SIC receiver

Fig. 1  Internal architecture of Software Defined Radio (SDR)

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 Table 1  Recent works carried out by employing SDR
Year Overview References

2017 SDR is used to derive a passive monitoring device for WiFi signals and channel state information for multipath mitigation [33]
2017 A cognitive radio TV (CR-TV) package has been implemented, allowing the dynamic utilization of underused TV spectrum bands [34]
2017 Built a device using a robust front-end detector that performs wideband data energy detection, channeling and multiband extrac- [35]
tion to provide raw bandpass signal snapshots
2017 A new Compressed sensing medium access control (CSMAC) framework, incorporating the physical layer and the data link layer, [36]
has been proposed
2017 To greatly decrease the operating overhead of SDRs, a Low-power listening (LPL), Medium access control (MAC) has been [37]
implemented
2017 A multi-tasking operating end-to-end transceiver baseband is developed which can shift within three common OFDM standards, [38]
IEEE 802.22, IEEE 802.16 and IEEE 802.11, operating in a non-contiguous manner with rapid switching
2017 Explored drone information security issues, public safety networks [39]
2017 A new SDR-based transceiver is developed to execute data encryption, spectrum sensing, and additive noise estimation in multiple [40]
input multiple-output (MIMO), space division multiple access
2018 A new Brain-machine interface (BMI) framework is proposed based on a shared database of wireless implantable sensors using [41]
SDR
Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple Access…

2018 Established an SDR-based system to detect and identify radio signals from unmanned aerial vehicles [42]
2018 A Software-defined phased array radio (SDPAR) operating around the 28 GHz 5G frequency band has been introduced [43]
2018 A novel SDR protection mechanism is implemented to prevent malicious software interfering with the configuration parameters [44]
2018 A high-frequency software-defined radar is developed and implemented for tropical coastal applications [45]
2018 Addressed various problems such as timing recovery, phase recovery and wireless connectivity system frequency adjustment using [46]
SDR
2019 Real time multiuser-MIMO signal processing using NI2922 USRP is discussed [47]
2019 Built to estimate the relative permittivity of soil and soil moisture in real-time, which is calculated from the loss of the propaga- [48]
tion path and wave propagation velocity of the underground (UG) transmitter and receiver connection in underground wireless
communications (WUC)
2019 Addressed realistic signal identification and the effect on detected signals of multiple filtering windowing methods [49]
2019 A new transmitter design based on the High-pass delta-sigma modulator (HPDSM has been implemented [50]
2019 Using Software-defined network (SDN) and Cognitive radio network (CRN), IoT and its design, issues, safety, frameworks and [51]

13
research directions are presented in detail
 Table 1  (continued)
Year Overview References

13
2020 The use of the high dynamic range (HDR) technique on radio frequency (RF) signals is implemented to improve the dynamic [52]
range of the signals beyond the limits of the hardware device
2020 Different human behaviors are conducted in the indoor setting using two USRPs, such as walking, sitting on a chair, etc. The [53]
experimental results showed that by observing the CSI data, each body motion can be visually described
2020 An augmented reality (AR) device is introduced using the Sequential wave imprinting machine (SWIM) with SDR to phase- [54]
coherently visualize electromagnetic (EM) radio waves and other periodic wave phenomena in real-time
2020 An enhanced deep neural architecture is implemented to incorporate radio signal recognition tasks, which is an essential for [55]
spectrum-sensing capability needed by SDR
2020 Suggested and incorporated major changes in the capabilities of the decode & forward relay node SDR framework [56]
2020 A study of the IoT vulnerabilities of wireless technologies and an evaluation of the observations of wireless attacks using SDR [57]
technologies is presented
2020 For the design of a self-management communication system with variable node positions, SDR and artificial intelligence (AI) are [58]
used. For the wireless signal, three affected parameters are considered: modulation type, bandwidth and channel frequency
2020 An assessment of the low-cost Stepped-frequency continuous wave (SFCW) radar-based microwave imaging (MWI) systems for [59]
the detection of breast cancer is presented
B. S. K. Reddy et al.
 Table 2  Recent works carried out on NOMA
Year Overview References

2019 The combination of NOMA and full duplex operation is described as a promising solution to enhance the potential of wireless [60]
systems of the next decade, and research challenges. Moreover, the future directions are also addressed so that full duplex
NOMA can be made practical in the field
2019 A robust energy efficiency model for Multi-user single-output (MISO) NOMA systems has been investigated [61]
2019 The research directions for successful implementation of NOMA in 5G is presented [62]
2019 Asymptotic fairness analysis at high and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values is provided for the two-user situation [63]
2020 Proposed a novel structure for large access capacity unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks by using NOMA [64]
2020 In addition to the motivational research approach for each case, the advantage and benefit of implementing the NOMA scheme in [65]
different satellite architectures is presented
2020 Proposed a new NOMA signal spreading-based systems that utilize the principles of frame-theoretical architecture to enable [66]
multiple users to compete effectively in multiple users
2020 A distributed millimeter-wave (mmWave) network is implemented with NOMA techniques in which NOMA users are modeled as [67]
Poisson cluster processes and each cluster comprises a center-based base station (BS)
2020 Beamforming transmission designs are discussed to optimize the minimum throughput of users subject to transmission power [68]
constraints
Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple Access…

2020 The user’s reliability output is presented in a downlink power domain NOMA device with arbitrary ordered pulse- amplitude [69]
modulation and quadrature amplitude modulation
2020 Experimental validation of the NOMA system is carried out by considering 4 users maintaining different distances from the base [70]
station using SDR testbed
2020 An aerial-ground non-orthogonal multiple access (AG-NOMA) system that pairs the GU and AU for data and control links, [71]
respectively, is proposed
2020 Increasing spectral and energy efficiency is proposed by the wireless powered cooperative relaying system with NOMA [72]
020 Presented and analyzed the first-ever prototype of a NOMA-supported WiFi device implemented on a software defined radio [73]
platform
2020 A modern coding scheme is proposed for NOMA, based on the use of a Rate compliant modulation (RCM) encoder for each user [74]
2020 Investigated the effect on the output of a single non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system of physical layer privacy, where [75]
both external and internal surveillance scenarios are evaluated
2020 Implemented NOMA’s novel approaches with regard to spectral and energy efficiency [76]

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 B. S. K. Reddy et al.

and Log-likelihood ratio (LLR) based receiver with a brief mathematical analysis. Section 3
presents the implementation of NOMA on various platforms such as OpenBTS which is a
software based GSM access point, srsLTE [developed by SRS ([Link]​arera​diosy​stems​
.com)], OpenAirInterface (OAI) (developed by a 5G software alliance for democratizing wire-
less innovation) and GNU Radio (a humorous recursive acronym meaning ‘GNU’s not Unix).
Section 4 presents the comparison of NOMA and OMA techniques in terms of rate pairs,
spectral efficiency and energy efficiency. Finally, Sect. 5 presents the conclusions drawn from
the Sects. 1, 2, 3 and 4.

2 Downlink NOMA with Various SIC Receivers

In this paper, it is assumed that two users are transmitting data through a single transmitter and
two receiving antennas, which are used to extract the data from superposition coded (transmit-
ted) data as shown in Fig. 2. The two users are maintaining different distances from the base
station (BTS) such as one user is nearer to the BTS (hereafter called as near user Nu) and other
user is far away from the BTS (called as far user Fu). The two users are allotted with different
power allocation ratios of α (for near user) and β (for far user), where α + β = 1, however, the
user pairing is done by maximizing the proportional fairness metric [77]. From an informa-
tion- theoretical point of view, it is well-known that non-orthogonal user multiplexing uses
superposition coding at the transmitter and SIC at the receiver to achieve the capacity region
of the downlink broadcast channel [78]. The received signal can be defined as
Y = HX + W (1)
where ‘Y’ is the received signal with the channel gain factor ‘H’ and noise ‘W’ for a trans-
mitted signal ‘X’. The superposed transmit signals can be written as
√ √
X = X1 + X2 = 𝛼x1 + 𝛽x2 (2)

If we rewrite the Eq. (1) for two users separately

�√ √ �
y1,1 = h1,1 𝛼x1 + 𝛽x2 + w1 (3)

�√ √ �
y1,2 = h1,2 𝛼x1 + 𝛽x2 + w2 (4)

�√ √ �
y1,3 = h1,3 𝛼x1 + 𝛽x2 + w1 (5)

�√ √ �
y1,4 = h1,4 𝛼x1 + 𝛽x2 + w2 (6)

For convenience, the above equations can be written in matrix form as follows
� � � � � �
y1,1 h1,1 �√ √ � w1,1
y1,2
=
h1,2
𝛼x1 + 𝛽x2 +
w1,2 (7)

where yi,j—the received signal at the jth receiving antenna of user i, hi,j—channel between
transmit antenna and the jth receive antenna of user i,  x1 and x2—transmitted symbols

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Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple Access…

from near user and far user, respectively, wk, (k = 1, 2)—the Additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN) with zero mean with variance σ2 on kth receiving antenna.
The power allocation coefficients (α and β) are determined on the basis of the user’s
channel gain such that the user with stronger channel condition gets less transmission
power and the user with poor channel condition gets high transmission power [2]. In the
detection of far user’s signal, the user with high power is separated and then decoded
by assuming the remaining signals as interference. For near user’s signal detection, this
decoded signal is subtracted from the total received signal and this process is continued
further for all the users’ information if there are more than two users and this is called as
Successive interference cancellation (SIC). Various SIC receivers are proposed in the liter-
ature [79] for extracting required signals from the received signal and their brief discussion
is presented as follows.

2.1 Ideal SIC Receiver

In ideal SIC receiver, it is assumed that the interference at the near user from the far user is
perfectly cancelled, then the near user’s signal ( x1) and far user’s (x2) signals are detected.
In the NOMA downlink, decoding is in the order of increasing channel gain normalized by
the noise and inter-cell interference power, |hi|2/N0,i. It is assumed for far user’s case (as
shown in Fig. 2) that |h1|2/N0,1 >|h2|2/N0,2, so near user first decodes X2 and detects its
component from received signal y1. Far user decodes x2 without interference cancellation
because it has the first decoding order. The throughput of two users can be defined as
[ ]
𝛼 ||h1 ||
2
R1 = log2 1 + (8)
W0,1

[ ]
𝛽 ||h2 ||
2
R2 = log2 1 + (9)
𝛼 ||h2 || + W0,2
2

where hk is the complex channel coefficient between the kth user and the BTS; W0,k is
the power density of Wk that denotes the receiver’s Gaussian noise, including inter-cell
interference.
The received power at the both the antennas corresponding to the transmitted symbols
x1 and x2 is presented in Eqs. (10) and (11), respectively [2],

Fig. 2  Base station with two

users

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 B. S. K. Reddy et al.

Px1 = ||h1,1 || + ||h2,1 ||

2 2
(10)

Px2 = ||h1,2 || + ||h2,2 ||

2 2
(11)

If Px1 > Px2, the receiver decides to remove the effect of x1 from the received vector y1 and
y2. Else if Px1 ≤ Px2, the receiver decides to subtract effect of x2 from the received vector y1
and y2, and then re-estimates x1.
The received signal at receiver 1 can be written as (assuming the affecting noise is zero)
[79]
h∗1,1 y1,1 + h∗1,2 y1,2
y1 = (12)
|h1,2 |2 + |h1,2 |2
| | | |
The received signal at receiver 2 can be written as
h∗2,1 y2,1 + h∗2,2 y2,2
y2 = (13)
|h2,1 |2 + |h2,2 |2
| | | |
The extracted symbol for near user can be described by
� √ �
yn − 𝛽x2
x1 = √ (14)
𝛼

where ⟨.⟩ denotes a demodulated and decoded signal. The detection of far user for ideal
and non-ideal SIC is compared in [80]. In addition to Ideal SIC receiver, two more SIC
receivers such as symbol-level and codeword-level SIC receivers are proposed in order to
mitigate the inter user interference.

2.2 Symbol‑Level SIC Receiver

In symbol-level SIC, the far user signal is only demodulated but not decoded. The far user’s
transmitted signal can be written as [79]
� �
yn
x2 = √ (15)
𝛼

where ⌊.⌋ denotes a demodulated signal without channel decoding. The near user’s signal
detection is given by
√
yn = yn − 𝛼x2 (16)

The near user’s transmitted signal can be written as

� �
yn
x1 = √ (17)
𝛽

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Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple Access…

2.3 Codeword‑Level SIC Receiver

In codeword-level SIC, the decoded and demodulated signal of the far user is re-
encoded, re-modulated and subtracted from the received signal to mitigate the interfer-
ence easily [77, 81, 82]. Hence, the noise effect is reduced drastically compared to the
Symbol level SIC receiver at the cost of more computational complexity. The perfor-
mance of symbol level and codeword level SIC receivers is compared for various modu-
lation schemes in [83, 84].

2.4 Log Likelihood Ratio (LLR) Based Receiver

In this method, the input bits from different users are combined in the constellation and
transmitted. The Log likelihood ratio (LLR) of each transmitted bit is measured at the
receiver side where the size of the constellation is decided on the basis of a total number
of bits from all the users [79]. For example, the constellation size is 2­ (bn+bf) for bn near
user’s bits and bf far user’s bits. The first and second bits of far user’s signal is detected
by using Eqs. (18) and (19), respectively [85].

⎧ − ��4⋅Re{yn }𝜀d1 � , � � �� √
⎪ 𝜎 2 �hn1 �2 +�hn2 �2 �Re yn � ≤ 𝛼∕2
� �
⎪ � �� � � �
⎪ 𝜀d1 + 𝜀d2 2 ⋅ Re yn + 𝜀d1 − 𝜀d2
⎪− �� � ,
LLR(nb1 ) = ⎨ 𝜎 2 ��hn1 �� + ��hn2 ��
2 2 � � √
Re yn > 𝛼∕2
⎪ � �� � � � � � √
⎪ 𝜀d1 + 𝜀d2 2 ⋅ Re yn + 𝜀d2 − 𝜀d1 Re yn > − 𝛼∕2
⎪ − �� � ,
⎪ 𝜎 2 ��hn1 �� + ��hn2 ��
2 2
⎩

⎧ − ��4⋅Im{yn }𝜀d1 � , � � �� √
⎪ 𝜎 2 �hn1 �2 +�hn2 �2 �Im yn � ≤ 𝛼∕2
� �
⎪ � �� � � �
⎪ 𝜀d1 + 𝜀d2 2 ⋅ Im yn + 𝜀d1 − 𝜀d2
⎪− �� � ,
LLR(nb2 ) = ⎨ 𝜎 2 ��hn1 �� + ��hn2 ��
2 2 � � √
Im yn > 𝛼∕2
⎪ � �� � � � � � √
⎪ 𝜀d1 + 𝜀d2 2 ⋅ Im yn + 𝜀d2 − 𝜀d1 Im yn > − 𝛼∕2
⎪− �� � ,
⎪ 𝜎 2 ��hn1 �� + ��hn2 ��
2 2
⎩
√ √ √ √
𝛼− 𝛽 𝛼+ 𝛽
where 𝜀d1 = 2
, 𝜀d2 = 2
; Re{x} denotes real part of the x, and Im{x} denotes
imaginary part of the x. The third and fourth bits of near user’s signal is detected by using
Eqs. (20) and (21). The third bit’s LLR can be written as [85]
( )( { })
𝜀d2 − 𝜀d1 𝜀d1 + 𝜀d2 − 2 ⋅ Re yn
LLR(nb3 ) = − /( ) ,
𝜎 2 ||hn1 || + ||hn2 ||
2 2

while, the LLR of the fourth bit is given by

13
 B. S. K. Reddy et al.

( )( { })
𝜀d2 − 𝜀d1 𝜀d1 + 𝜀d2 − 2 ⋅ Im yn
LLR(nb4 ) = − /( ) ,
𝜎 2 ||hn1 || + ||hn2 ||
2 2

This method needs only the nearest user’s detector, demodulator and decoder. The simu-
lation results in [79] suggest that compared to all other SICs receivers, the major perfor-
mance degradation is shown by symbol level SIC. Therefore, in order to use symbol-level
SIC, the power of far-user should be retained more than the threshold. It is noted that in all
cases for symbol-level SIC, the codeword-level SIC achieves almost the same output as the
ideal SIC while the interference of the far user can not be cancelled perfectly. It is inferred
from the results that the receiver based on the Log Likelihood Ratio (LLR) showed better
performance than the symbol-level SIC with no need for SIC processing leverage.

3 Implementation of NOMA on Various SDR Platforms

One of the best solutions for evaluating realistic NOMA device output is SDR [86]. Cur-
rently, most of the SDR projects are developed in an open-source approach such as Open-
BTS [87], srsLTE [88], OpenAirInterface (OAI) [89–91] and so on. Zhiqiang wei et al.,
developed a new transceiver by implementing superposition and cancellation of interfer-
ence for the NOMA system [6]. It is observed that with the increase in the proportion
of resource allocation ratio for OMA, the gain is increased and throughput is decreased,
but NOMA shows the constant higher throughput which is a significant benefit, regard-
less of resource allocation. Samith et al., proposed a new technology to evaluate bit error
rate (BER) performance for uplink NOMA users with the SDR platform [92]. A wide gap
is observed between perfect Channel state information (CSI) and imperfect CSI with the
increase in the number of users.

3.1 Implementation of NOMA Using GNU Radio

In our contribution, NOMA framework is implemented by using GNU Radio with two
users as shown in Figs. 3 and 4, illustrating the transmitter and receiver paths without the
successive interference cancellation (SIC) method, respectively [93]. Random data with
the power allocation factors given by 0.3 and 0.7, respectively, is transmitted by the two
users. User information signals are coded and modulated by Quadrature phase shift key
(QPSK) (CCSDS encoder [94]) and added together, then transmitted over a complex chan-
nel. In addition, various multipath fading channels such as AWGN, Rayleigh and Rician
Channel [95–97] can also replace the dynamic channel.
To observe the effect of noise on the modulated signal (shown in Fig. 5a), a QT GUI
constellation block is attached. The transmitted signal is obtained from virtual sources,
demodulated, decoded accordingly, and the constellation of the demodulated signal is
shown in Fig. 5b where maximum noise is removed and equalizers can be used for further
noise removal [98, 99]. The error rate block is linked at the end to analyze the results in
terms of the bit error rate, where the original message signal and the decoded signal are the
inputs to the block. Figures 6 and 7 display the far-user and near-user NOMA transceiver
with SIC, where the user signal is subtracted from the transmitted superimposed signal.
Figures 8 and 9 respectively display the obtained bit error rate for two users with SIC and
without SIC for Rayleigh and Rician networks. It is noted that the transceiver’s BER values

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Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple Access…

without SIC are greater than those of the SIC transceiver. Therefore, It is concluded that
NOMA with SIC is preferable for better BER efficiency to be achieved.

4 Performance Comparison of NOMA Versus OFDMA

Refic et al., presented the rate pairs with OFDMA and NOMA for uplink and downlink by
assuming two users [8]. In our contribution, some more case studies for the same system
by changing the power distribution values are presented in the following sections.

4.1 Analysis of Rate Pairs

Figure 10 shows a plot drawn for the achievable rate regions R1 and R2 for NOMA and
OFDMA for two users. It is observed that the NOMA gains higher rate pairs than the
OFDMA at center points as well as at the corners points since the rates are equal to the sin-
gle user capacities. Figure 10a, b are drawn for power P = 1 & 5 units, respectively and it is
illustrated that both the users show higher throughput for the higher values of fairness with
NOMA compared to OFDMA.
Figure 11a shows the rate pairs with OFDMA and NOMA for downlink NOMA, P = 5,
­SNR1 = ­SNR2 = 20. It is observed that when the fairness is high, both users experience
2.5 to 4 bps/Hz throughputs with both NOMA and OFDMA. If non-symmetric (Asym-
metric) channels are considered such that both the users are at different distances from
the base station (BS), Fig. 11b shows the performance of rate pairs with S ­ NR1 = 20 dB
and SNR 2 = 1 dB. Figure 11c shows the performance of rate pairs with ­SNR1 = 1 dB and
­SNR2 = 20 dB. It is observed that common throughput can be found for symmetric channel
at some points, however, common throughput is not possible for non-symmetric channels.

4.2 SE‑EE with NOMA

In this section, Spectral efficiency (SE) and Energy efficiency (EE) of NOMA and
OFDMA is compared for two users. The simulation parameters are considered with
noise density of − 150 dBW/Hz, bandwidth of 10 MHz and the static power consump-
tion of 100 W. Figure 12a illustrates the SE–EE trade-off curve of NOMA and OFDMA

Fig. 3  GNU schematic to implement transmitter path for NOMA

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 B. S. K. Reddy et al.

Fig. 4  GNU schematic to implement NOMA receiver without SIC

for channel gains G1 = − 200 dB and G2 = − 220 dB, where NOMA and OFDMA
achieved maximum SE as 13.8 and 10.6 b/sec/Hz, and maximum EE as 12 × ­ 105
5
and 9.1 × ­10 bits/joule, respectively. Figure 12b shows the curve for channel gains
G1 = − 120 dB and G2 = − 140 dB, where NOMA and OFDMA achieves maximum SE
as 11 and 7.8 b/sec/Hz, and maximum EE as 8.6 × ­105 and 6.3 × ­105 bits/joule, respec-
tively. Figure 12c shows the curve for channel gains G1 = − 60 dB and G2 = − 70 dB,
where NOMA and OFDMA achieves maximum SE as 29 and 28 b/sec/Hz, and maxi-
mum EE as 2.7 × ­106 and 2.6 × ­106 bits/joule, respectively. Figure 12d shows the curve
for channel gains G1 = − 5 dB and G2 = − 6 dB, where NOMA and OFDMA achieves
maximum SE as 47 b/sec/Hz, and maximum EE as 4.5 × ­106 bits/joule, respectively. It
is observed from Fig. 12 that both EE and SE are increased with the increase in channel
gains, however, NOMA achieved better performance than OFDMA in each and every
case. Therefore, it can be concluded that NOMA can be used for all future wireless tech-
nologies to achieve higher energy efficiency and spectral efficiency.
After analyzing all the data presented in this paper, it is observed that each multiple
access technique has its own advantages and disadvantages between performance and

Fig. 5  Constellation mappings for a Modulated signal, b Demodulated signal

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Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple Access…

Fig. 6  GNU schematic to implement NOMA transceiver with SIC for a user2

Fig. 7  GNU schematic to implement NOMA transceiver with SIC for user1

Fig. 8  BER analysis when the signal is transmitted over Rayleigh channel

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 B. S. K. Reddy et al.

Fig. 9  BER analysis when the signal is transmitted over Rician channel

implementation complexity for various applications. Therefore, it can be concluded that

SDR is a flexible platform to reconfigure multiple access services where all the multiple
access techniques such as OFDM, NOMA, SCMA, LDS-OFDM, SDMA etc. are inbuilt
with the platform. For different applications, different multiple access techniques can
be utilized by just reconfiguring the SDR platform, for instance, NOMA can be called
where the high spectral efficiency with massive connectivity is needed and when the
channel conditions are good; Likewise, OMA schemes can be called where ultra-high
definition video transmission is needed; SCMA can be called when the channel con-
ditions are very poor; LDS-OFDM or Multi-user shared access (MUSA) can be used
when the number of users is very large.

Fig. 10  Rate pairs with OFDMA and NOMA, a P = 1, ­SNR1 = ­SNR2 = 10 b P = 5, ­SNR1 = ­SNR 2 = 10

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Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple Access…

Fig. 11  Rate pairs with OFDMA and NOMA, a ­SNR1 = 20 dB, ­SNR2 = 20 dB, b ­SNR1 = 20 dB,
­SNR2 = 1 dB, c ­SNR1 = 1 dB, ­SNR2 = 20 dB

5 Conclusions and Future Work

A comprehensive survey on the implementation of NOMA techniques on the Software

Defined Radio (SDR) platform is presented in this paper and the key challenges required
to implement NOMA are presented. In terms of rate pairs, energy efficiency, spectral effi-
ciency, channel gains and bit error rate, the OMA and NOMA systems are analyzed and it
is observed from the results that NOMA performed well compared to OMA in all aspects.
In addition, multiple SIC receivers are analyzed and it is concluded that SIC at the code-
word level achieves almost the same efficiency as perfect SIC, but more power is to be
provided to far-reaching users to prevent performance degradation. Finally, it is concluded
that SDR is an emerging and flexible platform with multiple access strategies to achieve
multiple services and can be recommended for future wireless technologies (5G).
The authors would like to implement Adaptive coded modulation (ACM) for NOMA
transceivers in the future by allocating a particular coded modulation scheme to achieve
optimal power distribution based on the distance of users from the base station.

13
 B. S. K. Reddy et al.

Fig. 12  SE-EE curve of NOMA and OFDMA for Channel gains G1 and G2 a − 200 dB & − 220 dB, b
− 120 dB & − 140 dB, c − 60 dB & − 7 dB, d − 5 dB & − 6 dB

Authors’ Contributions In our contribution, the power domain NOMA with two users’ data using software
defined radio (SDR) with the help of GNU Radio is implemented and analyzed. To the best of authors’
knowledge, most of the survey papers presented about NOMA and SDR separately, however, this paper
presents a detailed survey about the implementation of NOMA techniques on SDR platform and the major
challenges required to implement NOMA. The OMA and NOMA systems are analyzed in terms of rate
pairs, energy efficiency, spectral efficiency, channel gains and bit error rate. Moreover, the major research
works done during 2017 to 2020 is presented in brief detail and references also provided for further analysis.

Funding No funding was used for this manuscript.

Availability of Data and Material Not applicable.

Code Availability [Link]​[Link] (It’s an open source software).

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of interest All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Software Defined Radio Based Non‑orthogonal Multiple Access…

Bathula Siva Kumar Reddy is an Associate Professor, Department of

Electronics and Communication Engineering, CMR Engineering Col-
lege, Hyderabad, Telangana, India. He has received [Link] (Electron-
ics andCommunication Engineering) and [Link] (Very Large Scale
Integrated Circuits Design) degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru Techno-
logical University, Hyderabad (JNTUH), PhD in the field of Wireless
Communications and Networks from National Institute of Technology,
Warangal, India, in 2009, 2012 and 2016, respectively. His area of
research includes Multi Carrier Modulations, OFDM, WiMAX, LTE,
and Software Defined Radio. He is anISTE (Indian Society for Techni-
cal Education) life time member and IDES (Institute of Doctors, Engi-
neers and Scientists) invited member. He has received InSc Young
Researcher Award for the year 2020–21.

Kiran Mannem is currently Associate Professor of ECE atGRIET,

Hyderabad, Telangana. He obtained [Link] from ANU, AP, [Link]
from JNTUCE, AP. Continuing Ph.D. from JNTUA, AP. His research
interests Wireless Communications, VLSI, Computers &
Communications.

K. Jamal received [Link]. in Electronics and Communication Engi-

neering, and [Link]. in VLSI Design and pursuing Ph.D. degree in
VLSI from the GITAM University, India. He has teaching experience
of 15 years. Presently he is Associate Professor from Electronics and
Communication Engineering, in GRIET, Telangana, India.

13