Parallax QAMA: Novel Downlink Multiple Access for MISO Systems with Simple Receivers

TL;DR

This paper introduces Parallax QAMA, a downlink multiple access scheme for MISO systems that enables simple receivers to achieve high data rates by leveraging unique constellation features and phase-aligned precoding, eliminating the need for SIC.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel downlink multiple access method combining H-QAM and SDMA principles, providing high data rates with low-complexity receivers without SIC.

Findings

Larger achievable rate region than non-SIC schemes

Comparable rate region to SIC-based schemes

Low receiver complexity similar to OMA

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel downlink multiple access system with a multi-antenna transmitter and two single-antenna receivers, inspired by the underlying principles of hierarchical quadrature amplitude modulation (H-QAM) based multiple access (QAMA) and space-division multiple access (SDMA). In the proposed scheme, coded bits from two users are split and assigned to one shared symbol and two private symbols carried by different beams. Based on joint symbol mapping of H-QAM constellations and phase-aligned precoding at the transmitter, each receiver observes a different H-QAM constellation with Gray mapping, a unique parallax feature not shared by existing schemes. In addition to avoiding successive interference cancellation (SIC), each user independently demodulates its own bits on separate I and Q branches with calculations based on closed-form expressions. Hence the receiver complexity is on par with that of orthogonal multiple access (OMA), which is much lower than that in other competing alternatives such as non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA). We carry out system optimization and determine the achievable rate region. Numerical results show that the proposed system has a larger rate region relative to other benchmark schemes with receivers not using SIC, and even achieves a comparable rate region to those benchmark schemes with SIC receivers.