Recently, due to its higher spectral efficiency and enhanced user experience, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been widely studied in visible light communication (VLC) systems. As a main concern in NOMA-VLC systems, the power allocation scheme greatly affects the tradeoff between the total achievable data rate and user fairness. In this context, our main aim in this work was to find a more balanced power allocation scheme. To this end, an adaptive power allocation scheme based on multi-attribute decision making (MADM), which flexibly chooses between conventional power allocation or inverse power allocation (IPA) and the optimal power allocation factor, has been proposed. The concept of IPA is put forward for the first time and proves to be beneficial to achieving a higher total achievable data rate at the cost of user fairness. Moreover, considering users’ mobility along certain trajectories, we derived a fitting model of the optimal power allocation factor. The feasibility of the proposed adaptive scheme was verified through simulation and the fitting model was approximated to be the sum of three Gaussian functions.
Optimal power allocation for downlink two-user non-orthogonal multiple access in visible light communication
