NOMA-Based Coexistence of Near-Field and Far-Field Massive MIMO Communications

TL;DR

This paper explores using NOMA in massive MIMO networks to enable simultaneous near-field and far-field user communication, demonstrating effective coexistence and performance improvements with more antennas.

Contribution

It introduces a NOMA-based approach for coexistence of near-field and far-field massive MIMO, leveraging preconfigured beams for enhanced multi-user support.

Findings

NOMA effectively supports near-field and far-field coexistence.

Increasing antennas improves NOMA-assisted massive MIMO performance.

The proposed method enhances spectral efficiency in mixed near- and far-field scenarios.

Abstract

This letter considers a legacy massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) network, in which spatial beams have been preconfigured for near-field users, and proposes to use the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) principle to serve additional far-field users by exploiting the spatial beams preconfigured for the legacy near-field users. Our results reveal that the coexistence between near-field and far-field communications can be effectively supported via NOMA, and that the performance of NOMA-assisted massive MIMO can be efficiently improved by increasing the number of antennas at the base station.