Abstract
This paper investigates a cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (C-NOMA) system, where the NOMA and buffer-aided cooperative transmission modes between the users are integrated. Two novel mode selection schemes are proposed, which adaptively select the NOMA and cooperative modes according to different buffer states and communication environments. These two proposed schemes are termed single-core state (SCS) and dual-core state (DCS) schemes since they correspond to single and dual-core buffer states. These core states are carefully chosen, which ensure not only a sufficient amount of available transmission modes or links but also a small number of stored packets at each buffer. The closed-form expressions of the outage probabilities and average delays of the proposed schemes are derived and verified by simulation results. Asymptotic performance analysis is also performed, revealing that both proposed schemes achieve the full diversity within the minimum required buffer size of two. Analytical and simulation results show that the proposed SCS and DCS schemes ensure favourable outage performance and the lowest delay, respectively.