Resolution of Near-Field Beamforming and Its Impact on NOMA

TL;DR

This paper investigates how near-field beamforming resolution affects user localization and demonstrates that imperfect resolution can be exploited by NOMA to serve multiple users simultaneously, enhancing connectivity and throughput.

Contribution

It identifies conditions where near-field beamforming resolution is imperfect and shows how this can be leveraged by NOMA to serve additional users effectively.

Findings

Imperfect near-field beamforming resolution can be beneficial for NOMA.

Preconfigured beams for legacy users can serve additional NOMA users.

Using NOMA with near-field beamforming improves system throughput.

Abstract

The resolution of near-field beamforming is an important metric to measure how effectively users with different locations can be located. This letter identifies the condition under which the resolution of near-field beamforming is not perfect. This imperfect resolution means that one user's near-field beam can be still useful to other users, which motivates the application of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). Both the analytical and simulation results are developed to demonstrate that those near-field beams preconfigured for legacy users can indeed be used to effectively serve additional NOMA users, which improves the overall connectivity and system throughput.