Multiple Antenna Aided NOMA in UAV Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Approach

This article investigates the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) assisted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) networks. By utilizing a stochastic geometry model, a new 3-Dimension UAV framework for providing wireless service to randomly roaming NOMA users has been proposed. In an effort to evaluate the performance of the proposed framework, we derive analytical expressions for the outage probability and the ergodic rate of MIMO-NOMA enhanced UAV networks. We examine tractable upper bounds for the whole proposed framework, with deriving asymptotic results for scenarios that transmit power of interference sources being proportional or being fixed to the UAV. For obtaining more insights for the proposed framework, we investigate the diversity order and high signal-to-noise (SNR) slope of MIMO-NOMA assisted UAV networks. Our results confirm that: i) The outage probability of NOMA enhanced UAV networks is affected to a large extent by the targeted transmission rates and power allocation factors of NOMA users; and ii) For the case that the interference power is proportional to the UAV power, there are error floors for the outage probabilities.