Price-Based Power Allocation for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is expected to be a promising multiple access technique for future wireless networks. In this letter, considering a cellular downlink NOMA system, we use game theory to model the interaction between the base station and multiple users as a Stackelberg game. The base station, which acts as the leader of the Stackelberg game, chooses a price on per transmitted power allocated to each user to maximize its own revenue. Each user chooses an optimal power to maximize its utility after the base station sets prices. The revenue function of the base station is ultimately expressed as a non-convex function of the power allocation among multiple users. We aim at solving the revenue maximization problem. We propose to decouple the problem into three optimization problems and employ alternating optimization algorithm to solve the problem. Simulation results show the proposed price-based power allocation scheme outperforms the uniform power allocation scheme.