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Pattern division multiple access (PDMA) for cellular future radio access

Conference Paper · October 2015

DOI: 10.1109/WCSP.2015.7341229

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 Pattern Division Multiple Access (PDMA) for
Cellular Future Radio Access
Jie Zeng, Bing Li, Xin Su, Liping Rong, Rongrong Xing
Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology
Research Institute of Information Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Email: [email protected]

Abstract—This paper presents a pattern division multiple efficiency. To fulfill the extremely challenging requirements in
access (PDMA) concept for cellular future radio access (FRA) 5G, new multiple access technologies have attracted consid-
towards the 2020s information society. Different from the current erable attention [4]. Multiple users can been served in the
LTE radio access scheme (until Release 11), PDMA is a novel
non-orthogonal multiple access technology based on the total same frequency and time resources via code domain and/or
optimization of multiple user communication system. It considers power domain multiplexing at the transmitter. At the receiver
joint design from both transmitter and receiver. At the receiver, multi-user signals are separated with successive interference
multiple users are detected by serial interference cancellation cancelation (SIC), message passing algorithm (MPA) and
(SIC) detection method. Numerical results show that the PDMA maximum likelihood (ML). Some potential alternative multiple
system based on SIC improve the average sum rate of users over
the orthogonal system with affordable complexity. access schemes are being actively investigated, including multi
Index Terms—5G; pattern division multiple access (PDMA); user shared access (MUSA), sparse code multiple access
serial interference cancellation (SIC). (SCMA)[5], pattern division multiple access (PDMA), power
domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)[6], filter
I. I NTRODUCTION bank based multi-carrier (FBMC) and universal filtered multi-
With the development of mobile communication, more carrier (UFMC).
requirements of its working quality are putted forward [1]. In this paper we evaluate the advantage of PDMA in a
In order to deal with the new challenges of explosive mobile downlink wireless network with fully loaded network. We
data traffic in the future, continuous emergence of new services propose pattern division multiple access (PDMA) using in-
and application scenarios, future fifth generation (5G) mobile terference cancelation (SIC) to improve system throughput
communication system emerges as the times require. 5G will and enhance the spectrum efficiency. The remainder of this
permeate almost every field of the future society, establish all- paper is organized as follows: Section II presents the concept
round user-centric information ecosystem. In order to bring and benefits of PDMA. Section III presents the pattern design
an immersive information feast. 5G will allow information in spatial and the details of power allocation. Section IV
to break the constraints of time, provide excellent interactive introduces simulation results about the rate region of PDMA
body experience [2]. For future radio access (FRA) in the system and a comparison with the orthogonal multiple access.
2020s-era, significant gains in capacity and quality of user Finally, conclusions are provided in Section V.
experience (QoE) are required in view of the anticipated
II. SYSTEM MODEL AND DESCRIPTION
exponential increase in the volume of mobile traffic, e.g.,
beyond a 500 fold increase in the next decade. In the 3.9 A. Concept of PDMA
and 4th generation (4G) mobile communication systems such Pattern Division Multiple Access (PDMA) is a novel non-
as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced [3], stan- orthogonal multiple access technology based on the total
dardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), optimization of multiple user communication system. Through
orthogonal multiple access based on OFDMA or single carrier the joint design of the sender and the receiver, the users
(SC)- FDMA is adopted. Orthogonal multiple access was a are distinguished by non-orthogonal design at the receiver
reasonable choice for achieving good system-level throughput and are detected with SIC at the receiver. PDMA has many
performance. While in theory orthogonal multiple access can technical advantages. The design of pattern has very strong
not reach the lower bound capacity for broadcast channel commonability by the signal design framework based on a
and the multiple access channel. So in order to boost further unified power temporal, spatial and coding domains. As an
the spectrum efficiency in the future, more advanced receiver new multiple access, PDMA can effectively suppress co-
designs should been identified and developed to meet future channel interference, achieve low power consumption, and
challenges. Also the clients need to have a more flexible allo- has high spectral efficiency. Aslo has flexible adaptation for
cation of resources which doesn’t need strict synchronization diversity scenarios in 5G system. PDMA can promote 1-2
between users. Novel multiple access (NMA) becomes hot times of the system spectrum efficiency, while in case of
direction to satisfy the requirements. Non-orthogonal multiple high capacity burst traffic scenario, PDMA can decrease data
access can increase the system capacity and improve spectrum transmission delay and enhance QoE of user access.
B. the design and optimization of PDMA in power domain C-UEi receiver

hi ,n  x1,n  x2,n  "  xk , n   zi ,n

Multiple users share a whole (FIG. 1 (b)) or part (FIG.
1 (c)) of the frequency resource block by assigning different
yi ,n
proportions of power (i.e. power domain characteristic pattern)
for each user in the power domain. According to the pattern, yi , n C-UE1 Decoder x1,n
multi-user signals are superimposed and then transmitted. The h1,n
key feature of the design is that based on the differences
of channel quality between cell center and edge users, a Ͳ C-UE2 Decoder x2,n
reasonable allocation of power methods is proposed to ensure
that the non-linear receiver has better detection performance.

...
hi ,n
Ͳ C-Ui Decoder xi ,n

Fig. 2. Structure of SIC receiver (Case of k-UE)..

Fig. 1. the design and optimization of PDMA in power domain

method of decoding and interference elimination , the SINR
of received signals can be expressed as:
The transmission signal can be expressed as:
∑√ SIN Rn (in (k)) =
xn = pn (in (k))dn (in (k)) (1) Pn (in (k))Gn (in (k))
∑ (4)
In the above formula, Pn (in (k)) and dn (in (k)) respec- {Pn (in (j))Gn (in (k))} Gn (in (j)) < Gn (in (k)) + Nk,n
Zn (in (j)) Zn (in (k))
tively denote the allocated transmit power to the user at j∈Un
frequency block n and the coded modulation symbols, and Therefore, the throughput of user in (k) at resource block n
E[|dn (in (k))|2 ] = 1 . At this time, the received signal of the is represented as
C-UE can be expressed as:
Tn (in (k)) =
yn (in (k)) = hk,n (in (k))xn (in (k)) + wk,n (in (k)) (2) Pn (in (k))Gn (in (k))
log2 (1 + ∑ )
where hk,n (in (k)) is the channel relevance vector of user {Pn (in (j))Gn (in (k))} Gn (in (j)) < Gn (in (k)) + Nk,n
Zn (in (j)) Zn (in (k))
in (k) at frequency block n, including path loss, shadow fading j∈Un
(5)
and fast fading. wk,n in (k) denotes the system noise and
interference. And we assume that the interference can be seen C. the design and optimization of PDMA in spatial domain
as white noise for the receiver. At the receiver maximal ratio
combining (MRC) is applied to as follows
yn∼ (in (k)
= ||hk,n (in (k))||x + hH
k,n (in (k))Zk,n (in (k))/||hk,n || (3)
√
= Gn (in (k)) Xn + Zn (in (k))
where Gn represents equivalent channel gain after MRC. And
nk,n is the noise and inter-cell interference after MRC. The
average power of nk,n is denoted as Nk,n =E[|Zn (in (k)|2 ].
The key idea of SIC is that decodes symbols iteratively by sub-
tracting the detected symbols of strong users first to facilitate Fig. 3. the design and optimization of PDMA in spatial domain
detection of weak users. Signals are decoded one after another,
with the receiver canceling interference after each detected [ ] [ ] [ ]
N N N
symbol.The receiver of collaboration U Es can decode the + + ··· + = 2N − 1 (6)
1 2 N
signal according to the ascending order of channel gain,
as shown below. For example, if Gn (in (k))/Zn (in (k)) < where denotes the set of all K-combinations of a set N. Based
Gn (in (j))/Zn (in (j)), C-UEi are first decoded, C-UEi first on (3), we may design the PDMA structure for N =2, K = 3,
decode the signal xk,n , and minus this part in the received N = 3, K = 7(= 24 − 1) as follows:
( )
signal yj,n . Thus, C-UEj can decode the signal xj,n with- 1 1 0
HP DM A,2×3 = (7)
out interference xk,n . As shown in Fig2: According to the 1 0 1
  
1 1 0 1 1 0 0 H = [h1 , h2,··· , hk ] denotes effective received signature matrix,
HP DM A,3×7 = 1 1 1 0 0 1 0  (8) refers to the transmitted symbols and is the noise vector. The
1 0 1 1 0 0 1 effective received signature H can also be decomposed as
The user data streams on airspace superimposed non- H = Hch HP DM A (11)
orthogonal transmissionand the receiving end user can code-
word / symbol SIC level demodulation. Where Hch denotes effective received signature matrix,
HP DM A denotes multi-user superposition coded matrix. Con-
D. Benefits and practical considerations of NMA sider a downlink communication scenario, where a BS
equipped with two antennas communicates with multiple users
NMA has many benefits. NMA can reach the bound of the
equipped with only one antenna each. Since PDMA transmis-
multi-user channel’s capacity region, and provide significant
sion is adopted, the BS transmit symbol vectors x1 , x2 and
gain over orthogonal multiple access on system throughout
x3 respectively in two resource blocks. The transmitted signal
and edge user throughout. NMA mainly relies on CSI at
at the BS can be written as
receiver side and thus can provide gains even in high mobility
scenarios. So has good robust performance gain in high mo- y1 = H1 x1 + H1 x2 + V1 (12)
bility scenarios. NMA also has good backward compatibility
y2 = H2 x1 + H2 x2 + V2 (13)
with OFDMA/SC-FDMA and good affinity with multi-antenna
technology. But we should consider some practical problems, y3 = H3 x1 + H3 x3 + V3 (14)
such as multi-user power allocation, signalling overhead, im-
pact of SIC error propagation, receiver design and so on. where H1 , H2 and H3 denote the channel of user 1, user 2
and user 3 respectively.
III. PDMA MECHANISM WITH SIC y = Hch HP DM A X + V (15)
 
[ ][ ] x1
h h12 h13 1 1 0  
y = 11 x2 (16)
h21 h22 h23 1 0 1
   x3
8VHU  
[ ] x
h h12 0  1
y = 11 x2 (17)
h21 0 h23
5( x3
The rate of user 1, user 2 and user 3 can be expressed
respectively as:
P1 |H1 |2
R1 = log(1 + ) (18)
N0 B1
User3
User1 P2 |H2 |2
R2 = log(1 + ) (19)
P1 |H2 |2 + N0 B2
User2 P3 |H3 |2
R3 = log(1 + ) (20)
P1 |H3 |2 + N0 B3
A. SIC
In SIC, it is required that the receiver decode the received
signal sent to other UEs for interference cancellation, and thus
Fig. 4. Downlink PDMA systems the SINR of the signal to be cancelled should be sufficiently
high so that it is decodable at the receiver. The OSIC based
detection algorithm of the V-BLAST system [10] are as
Considering a PDMA network as shown in Fig. 4, where
follows:
one base station (BS) services three users in two resource
Initialization. At the first detection stage (i = 1), Let H1 =
blocks. Without loss of generality, we assume that user 1
H and y1t = yt .
is strong user and user 2 and user 3 are weak users, which Nulling. At the it h detection stage, a nulling matrix W i is
indicates that user 1 maybe a central user while user 2 and calculated as
user 3 are at the cell-edge.
W i = (H i )+ = ((H)i )H (H i ))−1 (H i )H (21)
∑
K
y= hk xk + V = HX + V (9) Choose the layer with largest signal-to-interference-plus-noise
k=1 ratio (SINR) to detect.
y = Hch HP DM A X + V (10) Ki = argmin||(W i )j ||2 (22)
 wki = (wi )ki (23) gradually from 0.01 to 0.49. For each value, the corresponding
throughput is calculated. Similarly, in case of FSPA, all
where (W i )k i denotes the ki − th row of matrix Wi . Then, possible combinations of power allocations are considered for
project the received signal y onto the nulling direction and each candidate user set. So optimal power allocation factor α
perform the slicing operation to detect the symbol as follows can been determined. The whole system throughput can been
Ski = Q(wkHi yti ) (24) improved.
2) Fixed transmission power assignment: The second
where Q(.) denotes the slicing operation closest to the argu- method is fixed transmission power assignment. This method
ment. is a fixed (channel-independent) power allocation. We assume
Cancelation. Subtract the detected signal from the received that the users in set Un are sorted in order of the decreasing
signal to get normalized channel gain. The transmission power of user
yti+1 = yti − hki ski (25) in (k) is set to
B. Multi-user scheduling P (in (k)) = αf ix P (in (k + 1)) (27)
We can get the power of user in (k):
αmn −k
Pn (in (k)) = P (28)
1 + α + αmn −1
3) Fractional transmission power assignment: The other
is fractional transmission power assignment. FTPA is similar
to the transmission power control used in the LTE uplink
[10]. In this method, power control compensates for a part
of the variation in the channel conditions among users. The
transmission power of user k is determined as
Pn (in (k)) =
P Gn (in (k)) −αf tpc
∑ (
−αf tpc Z (i (k))
)
j∈Un (Gn (in (j))/Zn (in (j))) n n
(29)
Fig. 5. multi-user pairing IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
For comparison, the OMA transmission is considered as the
In PDMA, the scheduler allocates more than one user for
baseline in which three users transmit in three orthogonal time
transmission for each subband. System throughput and user
slots.
fairness are affected by scheduling guidelines, especially users
throughput in CRE. The PF scheduler [8][9] is known to
achieve a good tradeoff between them by maximizing the
product of the average user throughput among users within a
cell. Assume a set of users Un with instantaneous throughput
and average throughput. Where Rn (k|U, t) represent user k in
resource block n at time instance t, and L(k, t) is the average
throughput of user k. The target of pairing is to maximize the
candidate user set Un according to the following criteria
∑ Tn (k|U, t)
Qn (U ) = ( )
L(k, t) (26)
k∈U
Un = maxU Qs (U )
C. Multi-user power allocation
We consider the following three power allocation methods.
1) Full search power assignment: The first method is full
search power assignment (FSPA). FSPA is used to determine
the optimal power allocation factor α. Large scale or small Fig. 6. Average Sum Rate.
scale fading is taking into account to exhaustively search the
optimal power ratio maximizing TPA metric. There are two Fig. 6 shows the average sum rate performance of PDMA
ways to assign power in FSPA. Full sets: p1 =np, p2 =(1 − n)p and OMA algorithms. We can find that the proposed PDMA
with n=0.01:0.01:0.49. In full sets, value for n increases algorithms significantly outperform the OMA methods. And
 [7] Wolniansky, P. W., Foschini, G. J., Golden, G. D., Valenzuela R. A.
(1998). V-BLAST: An architecture for realizing very high data rates
over the rich-scattering wireless channel. In Proceedings of the URSI
International Symposium on Signals, Systems and Electronics. Pisa,
Italy, SeptemberCOctober, pp. 295C300.
[8] A. Jalali, R. Padovani, and R. Pankaj, Data throughput of CDMA-HDR a
high efficiency-high data rate personal communication wireless system,
in Proc. IEEE VTC2000-Spring, May 2000.
[9] M. Kountouris and D. Gesbert, Memory-based opportunistic multi-user
beamforming, in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Information Theory (ISIT),
Adelaide, Australia, Sept. 2005.
[10] N. Otao, Y. Kishiyama, and K. Higuchi, Performance of non-orthogonal
access with SIC in cellular downlink using proportional fair-based
resource allocation, ISWCS, pp. 476-480, Aug. 2012.

Fig. 7. Cell-edge User Rate.

we can see from Fig. 7 that PDMA method can greatly

improve the rate of cell-edge users.

V. CONCLUSION
Facing the future huge data traffic, in order to meet the
KPI(Key Performance Indicator) demanded in 5G, the problem
that how to increase system capacity and improve spectral
efficiency should been considered and solved. In this paper
we propose PDMA communication mechanism with SIC.
In this method the spectrum utilization is improved, and
the average sum rate of users are increased with new non-
orthogonal multiple access technology. While several technical
challenges have to be researched and solved for using PDMA,
for example the complexity implementation and practical
performance of NMA receiver, power allocation scheme. By
system simulation, it is observed that the proposed PDMA
communication mechanism with SIC is prior to OMA system.

VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the China’s 863 Project
No.2015AA01A709, the National S&T Major Project
No.2014ZX03001011, Science and Technology Program of
Beijing No.D151100000115003 and by Scientific and Tech-
nological Cooperation Projects No.2015DFT10160B.

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