Adaptive constellation multiple access for beyond 5G wireless systems

We propose a novel non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme referred as adaptive constellation multiple access (ACMA) which addresses key limitations of existing NOMA schemes for beyond 5G wireless systems. Unlike the latter, that are often constrained in choices of allocation of power, modulations and phases to allow enough separation of clusters from users’ combined signals; ACMA is power, modulation and phase agnostic—forming unified constellations instead—where distances of all possible neighbouring points are optimized. It includes an algorithm at basestation (BS) calculating phase offsets for users’ signals such that, when combined, it gives best minimum Euclidean distance of points from all possibilities. The BS adaptively changes the phase offsets whenever system parameters change. We also propose an enhanced receiver using a modified maximum likelihood (MML) method that dynamically exploits information from the BS to blindly estimate correct phase offsets and exploit them to enhance data rate and error performances. Superiority of this scheme—which may also be referred to as AC-NOMA—is verified through extensive analyses and simulations.