Subcarrier Assignment and Power Allocation for SCMA Energy Efficiency

In this paper we propose a resource allocation algorithm for uplink sparse code multiple access (SCMA) networks to maximize the energy efficiency (EE). Due to the joint optimization of factor graph matrix and power allocation matrix, the EE maximization is a non-convex mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem. After transforming the non-convex form of the uplink sum rate to a convex one and separating subcarrier assignment and power allocation, we propose an energy efficient subcarrier assignment algorithm. By applying the fractional programming theory based on the Dinkelbach method, we then propose power allocation algorithm to maximize EE. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed resource allocation algorithm can significantly increase the EE of the uplink SCMA network.