Energy Efficiency Maximization for Discrete Activation based NOMA-assisted Pinching-Antenna Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel joint optimization approach for energy efficiency in NOMA-assisted pinching-antenna systems, considering antenna activation power, and demonstrates significant gains over existing methods.

Contribution

It introduces a two-layer iterative algorithm for EE maximization that jointly optimizes antenna activation and user power allocation in PASS.

Findings

Proposed method achieves substantial EE gains over fixed antenna systems.

Approaches the exhaustive-search upper bound with lower complexity.

Highlights importance of considering antenna activation power in EE optimization.

Abstract

Pinching-antenna systems (PASS) have recently attracted significant attention as a promising architecture for flexible and reconfigurable wireless communications. Despite notable advancements, research on energy efficiency (EE) maximization for PASS is limited as existing studies mainly focus on transmit power minimization or utilizing a simple power consumption model. This paper evaluates the impact of pinching antenna (PA) activation power on EE maximization in a downlink NOMA-assisted PASS by jointly optimizing PA activation and user power allocation under quality-of-service and transmit power constraints. To tackle the resulting mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem, we develop a two-layer iterative algorithm, where the outer layer performs matching-based PA selection and the inner layer computes a closed-form optimal power allocation solution. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed solution achieves substantial EE gains over conventional fixed antennas systems and the considered benchmark schemes, approaches the exhaustive-search upper bound with significantly reduced complexity, while exhibiting fast convergence. It also demonstrates the significance of accounting for PA activation power in EE maximization problem.