GUEST EDITORIAL
Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for 5G
Linglong Dai Zhiguo Ding Naofal Al-Dhahir Chih-Lin I
I n the fifth generation (5G) of wireless communication sys-
tems, hitherto unprecedented requirements such as high
spectral efficiency, massive connectivity, and low latency
must be satisfied. As a promising solution to address these
challenges, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has
been actively investigated in recent years. Unlike convention-
al orthogonal multiple access (OMA) schemes, the key idea
behind NOMA is to support multiple users by non-orthogonal
resource allocation and hence introduce a controllable amount
of inter-user interference that can be mitigated with the aid of
sophisticated multi-user detectors at the cost of increased receiv-
er complexity. Recently, various novel NOMA schemes have
been extensively investigated for 5G, such as power-domain
NOMA and code-domain NOMA, including multiple access
solutions relying on low-density spreading, sparse code multi-
ple access, lattice partition multiple access, multi-user shared
access, as well as pattern division multiple access. Moreover,
standardization work on NOMA has been started in the Third
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) under the name multi-us-
er superposition transmission (MUST). The NOMA principle has
also been recently standardized by the next generation digital
TV standard ATSC 3.0 under the term layered division multi-
plexing (LDM), and related field test results have demonstrated
significant gains in spectral efficiency.
This Special Issue aims to not only serve as a collection of
new ideas and recent developments addressing the challenges
arising in future 5G cellular networks employing NOMA, but
also inspire researchers to contribute to this promising field.
This Special Issue consists of 15 articles, covering a wide range
of topics on resource allocation, signal processing, coordinated
multipoint (CoMP), and so on.
In the first article, “Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access: A Uni-
fied Perspective” by Qi Wang, Rong Zhang, Lie-Liang Yang,
and Lajos Hanzo, a unified framework for NOMA schemes in
different domains is proposed. Furthermore, a systematic perfor-
mance comparison of different NOMA schemes is provided for
different application scenarios. Relying on the proposed unified
framework, the authors generalize the current understanding of
the NOMA principle from the conventional code and power
domains to the spatial domain as well as to their hybrids and to
the networking domain.
The second article, “Multiple Antenna Assisted Non-Orthog-
onal Multiple Access” by Yuanwei Liu, Hong Xing, Cunhua Pan,
Arumugam Nallanathan, Maged Elkashlan, and Lajos Hanzo,
focuses on exploiting multiple-antenna techniques in NOMA
networks, with an emphasis on investigating the rate region of
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-NOMA, reviewing two
8 IEEE Wireless Communications • April 2018
George K Ioannis Krikidis Robert Schober
Karagiannidis
popular multiple-antenna-aided NOMA structures, as well as
underlining resource management problems of both single-carri-
er and multi-carrier MIMO-NOMA networks.
In the third article, “Coordinated Multipoint Transmission
in Downlink Multi-Cell NOMA Systems: Models and Spectral
Efficiency Performance” by Md Shipon Ali, Ekram Hossain, and
Dong In Kim, the authors describe a general framework to use
CoMP transmission technology in downlink multi-cell NOMA
systems considering distributed power allocation at each cell.
After a brief review of the working principle of different CoMP
schemes, their applicability and necessary conditions for their
use in a downlink multi-cell NOMA system are investigated.
In the fourth article, “Signal Processing for MIMO-NOMA: Pres-
ent and Future Challenges” by Yongming Huang, Cheng Zhang,
Jiaheng Wang, Yindi Jing, and Luxi Yang, key concepts and basic
problems of MIMO-NOMA are first summarized. Then the main
technical contributions and drawbacks of existing works in single/
multi-cluster MIMO-NOMA are explored from the perspectives
of problem formulation, beamforming, user clustering, and power
allocation. Furthermore, the stability of successive interference
cancellation (SIC) is shown to be a key issue for the application
of MIMO-NOMA with practical modulation and coding schemes,
which was neglected in existing works to some extent.
The fifth article, “Resource Allocation for Downlink NOMA
Systems: Key Techniques and Open Issues” by S. M. Riazul
Islam, Ming Zeng, Octavia Dobre, and Kyungsup Kwak, presents
advances in resource allocation for downlink NOMA systems,
focusing on user pairing and power allocation algorithms. The
authors introduce the concept of cluster fairness and propose
the divide-and-next largest difference-based user pairing algo-
rithm to distribute the capacity gain among the NOMA clusters
in a controlled manner. Furthermore, performance comparison
between MIMO-NOMA and MIMO-OMA is conducted when
users have pre-defined quality of service (QoS) levels.
In the sixth article, “Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation in
NOMA Heterogeneous Networks” by Haijun Zhang, Fang Fang,
Julian Cheng, Keping Long, Wei Wang, and Victor Leung, to
study the trade-off between data rate performance and ener-
gy consumption in NOMA, the authors examine the problem
of energy-efficient user scheduling and power optimization
in NOMA heterogeneous networks. The energy-efficient user
scheduling and power allocation schemes are introduced for the
downlink NOMA heterogeneous network for perfect and imper-
fect channel state information (CSI), respectively.
In the seventh article, “Pattern Division Multiple Access
(PDMA): A New Multiple Access Technology for 5G” by Xiao-
ming Dai, Zhenyu Zhang, Baoming Bai, Shanzhi Chen, and

Shaohui Sun, a non-orthogonal PDMA scheme is introduced.
The key feature of the PDMA scheme is joint design of the
transmitter and receiver, which enables low-complexity SIC-
based multi-user detection with substantially improved perfor-
mance over conventional OMA schemes. Link-level simulations
illustrate that PDMA is capable of accommodating a 300 per-
cent overload, while it still enjoys a transmission reliability close
to conventional OMA schemes.
The eighth article, “Spatial Modulation Assisted Multi-Anten-
na Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access” by Caijun Zhong, Xiaoling
Hu, Xiaoming Chen, Wing Kwan Ng, and Zhaoyang Zhang,
proposes a novel spatial modulation (SM) assisted multi-anten-
na NOMA technique that avoids the use of SIC, and is able
to completely cancel intra-cluster interference. Furthermore,
simulation results are provided to validate the effectiveness of
the proposed novel technique compared to the conventional
multi-antenna NOMA.
In the ninth article, “Trellis Coded Modulation for Non-Or-
thogonal Multiple Access Systems: Design, Challenges, and
Opportunities” by Boya Di, Lingyang Song, and Yonghui Li,
the authors propose a framework to apply multidimensional
trellis coded modulation (MD-TCM) techniques in code-domain
NOMA to jointly design the superposed codewords. Three
TCM-based NOMA applications are investigated: TCM-based
NOMA for MIMO systems, TCM-based NOMA for cooperative
relay systems, and TCM-based NOMA for vehicular systems.
Open research issues in these applications are also discussed.
The 10th article, “Coded Tandem Spreading Multiple Access
for Massive Machine Type Communication” by Guoyu Ma, Bo
Ai, Fanggang Wang, Xia Chen, Zhangdui Zhong, Zhuyan Zhao,
and Hao Guan, introduces a spreading-based grant-free NOMA
approach, namely, coded tandem spreading multiple access
(CTSMA). The essence of this technique is collision resolution
capability from the tandem spreading codebook and segment
coding. In addition to the transmitter and receiver designs, a
closed-form expression of the collision resolution capability is
derived in this article to reveal the trade-off among the connec-
tivity, the reliability, and the user data rate when using CTSMA.
In the 11th article, “Optical Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access
for Visible Light Communication” by Hanaa Marshoud, Sami
Muhaidat, Paschalis Sofotasios, Sajjad Hussain, Muhammad
Imran, and Bayan Sharif, an optical-NOMA (O-NOMA) scheme
is presented. The authors provide a detailed overview and anal-
ysis of the state-of-the-art integration of O-NOMA in visible
light communication (VLC) networks. Furthermore, the authors
provide useful insights on the potential opportunities and chal-
lenges as well as some challenging open research problems
that are envisioned to pave the way for the future design and
implementation of O-NOMA in VLC systems.
The 12th article, “Power Domain Non-Orthogonal Transmis-
sion for Cellular Mobile Broadcasting: Basic Scheme, System
Design, and Coverage Performance” by Zhengquan Zhang,
Zheng Ma, Xianfu Lei, Xiao Ming, Cheng-Xiang Wang, and Ping-
zhi Fan, systematically studies the application of power-domain
NOMA in cellular mobile broadcasting. The authors propose a
general framework for superposition coded modulation to inte-
grate existing schemes, and further study constellation rotation
to improve the modulation performance.
The 13th article, “State of the Art, Taxonomy, and Open
Issues on NOMA in Cognitive Radio Networks” by Fuhui Zhou,
Yongpeng Wu, Ying-Chang Liang, Zan Li, Yuhao Wang, and
Kai-Kit Wong, aims to survey the latest research results on
cognitive radio networks (CRNs) with NOMA. A taxonomy is
devised to categorize the literature based on operation para-
digms, enabling techniques, design objectives, and optimization
characteristics. Moreover, the key challenges are outlined to
IEEE Wireless Communications • April 2018
GUEST EDITORIAL
provide guidelines for domain researchers and designers to
realize CRNs with NOMA.
The 14th article, “Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for Coop-
erative Communications: Challenges, Opportunities, and Trends”
by Dehuan Wan, Miaowen Wen, Fei Ji, Hua Yu, and Fangjiong
Chen, investigates NOMA-based cooperative relaying networks.
The authors divide the existing relay-assisted NOMA systems into
three categories: uplink, downlink, and composite architectures.
Furthermore, a novel strategy termed hybrid power allocation is
discussed for the composite architecture, which can reduce the
computational complexity and signaling overhead at the expense
of a marginal sum rate degradation.
The 15th article, “Toward Cross-Layer Design for Non-Or-
thogonal Multiple Access: A Quality-of-Experience Perspec-
tive” by Wei Wang, Yuanwei Liu, Zhiqing Luo, Tao Jiang, Qian
Zhang, and Arumugam Nallanathan, systematically investigates
quality of experience (QoE)-aware NOMA designs that trans-
late the physical-layer benefits of NOMA to the enhancement
of users’ perceived experiences in the upper networking layers.
Furthermore, a general architecture with a dynamic network
scheduling scheme is developed.
Finally, we thank all the authors who submitted their works
to this Special Issue and many experts who participated in the
review process. We are very grateful to the Editor-in-Chief for
bringing forth this Special Issue and for his enlightening guidance.
Biographies
Linglong Dai [M’11, SM’14] received his Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China, in 2011. He is currently an associate professor of Tsinghua University.
His current research interests include massive MIMO, millimeter-wave communications,
multiple access, and sparse signal processing. He has received four IEEE conference
best paper awards (IEEE ICC ‘13, IEEE ICC ‘14, IEEE ICC ‘17, and IEEE VTC’-Fall ‘17).
Zhiguo Ding [S’03, M’05] is with Manchester University as a Chair Professor. From October
2012 to September 2019, he has also been an academic visitor at Princeton University.
His research interests are 5G networks, game theory, cooperative and energy harvesting
networks, and statistical signal processing. He received the best paper award at the IET
Communications Conference on Wireless, Mobile and Computing ‘09, IEEE Communi-
cation Letter Exemplary Reviewer 2012, and the EU Marie Curie Fellowship 2012–2014.
Naofal Al-Dhahir [F’07] received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
Stanford University. He is an Erik Jonsson Distinguished Professor at UT-Dallas. He is
a co-inventor of 41 issued U.S. patents, co-author of over 385 papers with over 9700
citations, and a co-recipient of 4 IEEE best paper awards, including the 2006 IEEE Don-
ald G. Fink Award. He is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Communications.
Chih-Lin I is China Mobile’s chief scientist of wireless technologies. She has estab-
lished the Green Communications Research Center, spearheading major initiatives
including system architectures, technologies, and devices, green energy, C-RAN, and
soft base stations. She is currently an Executive Board Member of GreenTouch and
a Network Operator Council Member of ETSI NFV. Her research interests are green
communications, C-RAN, network convergence, and bandwidth active antenna arrays.
George K. Karagiannidis [M’96, SM’03, F’14] is a professor in the Electrical &
Computer Engineering Deptartment and the director of Digital Telecommunications
Systems and Networks Laboratory, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has
been involved as General Chair, Technical Program Chair, and member of Technical
Program Committees in several IEEE and non-IEEE conferences. He is a highly cited
author across all areas of electrical engineering, recognized as a 2015, 2016 and
2017 Web-of-Science Highly-Cited Researcher.
Ioannis Krikidis [S’03, M’07, SM’12] is an associate professor at the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus, Nicosia. He serves as
an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on
Green Communications and Networking, and IEEE Wireless Communications Letters.
He was the recipient of the Research Award Young Researcher from the Research
Promotion Foundation, Cyprus, in 2013, as well as the recipient of the IEEE ComSoc
Best Young Professional Award in Academia in 2016.
Robert Schober [S’98, M’01, SM’08, F’10] is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor
and the Chair for Digital Communication at Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen,
Germany. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of
the Engineering Institute of Canada. He serves as the Chair of the Steering Committee
of IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multiscale Communications, as a
Member-at-Large on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communication Society
and as an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer.
9