SWIPT-aided NOMA for Next-Gen Consumer IoT Networks in Compound Fading Channels

The surge in consumer Internet of Things (IoT) devices can potentially introduce significant challenges for future wireless communication systems, particularly in terms of increased energy consumption and spectrum scarcity. The advent of 6G wireless communication is expected to accelerate the evolution of consumer IoT networks, ensuring the sustainable and efficient deployment of these networks. In this regard, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a promising 6G technology that can improve the experience of consumer IoT network users in terms of spectral efficiency, medium access fairness, and delay. Motivated by this, this paper studies the performance of a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT)-aided cooperative relaying NOMA (CR-NOMA) system over compound fading channels, namely, the α−Lomax fading model, in terms of ergodic sum rate (ESR). Specifically, a consumer IoT network is considered with one access point communicating with one far consumer electronic device and one energy-constrained near consumer electronic device, which also acts as a relay based on the decode-and-forward (DF) and power-splitting relaying (PSR) protocols. For comparison’s sake, the performance of a SWIPT-aided cooperative relaying orthogonal multiple access (CR-OMA) system was also studied. The influence of various system parameters, such as power splitting factor, energy harvesting efficiency, power allocation factor, fading parameters etc, on the system performance was explored. It was demonstrated that optimizing the power splitting factor and the power allocation factor are crucial to maximizing the ESR of the proposed SWIPT-aided CR-NOMA scheme. Results also indicated that the performance of the optimized SWIPT-aided CR-NOMA system is more superior compared to that of the SWIPT-aided CR-OMA system. Increasing α and/or λ parameter of the α−Lomax model will enhance the ESR performance.