Rate Splitting for Uplink NOMA with Enhanced Fairness and Outage Performance

In this paper, we investigate rate splitting (RS) for an uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system with a pair of near and far users adopting cyclic prefixed single carrier transmissions. Frequency-domain equalization is applied to assist successive interference cancellation at the base-station. Two kinds of RS schemes, namely, fixed RS (FRS) and cognitive RS (CRS) schemes, are proposed to realize RS for uplink NOMA with the aim of improving user fairness and outage performance in delay-limited transmissions. Corresponding to the split data streams, transmit power is allocated in either a fixed or cognitive manner for the FRS and CRS schemes, respectively. Based on achievable rate region analysis, the benefits of applying RS to uplink NOMA for enhancing the user fairness and outage performance are revealed. A modified Jain’s index is proposed to measure the user fairness for the considered delay-limited transmissions. Closed-form expressions are derived for the outage probabilities of the paired users, respectively, whereas the preferred system parameters are chosen based on asymptotic outage probability expressions. The enhanced user fairness and superior outage performance of the proposed RS schemes are corroborated by Monte Carlo simulation results.