Abstract
In this paper, non-orthogonal-multiple-access (NOMA)-based cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is investigated, where the users are grouped into multiple clusters. Exploiting conjugate beamforming, the bandwidth efficiency (BE) of the system is derived while the assumption that the users performing realistic successive interference cancellation (SIC) based on only the knowledge of channel statistics. The max-min fairness problem of maximizing the lowest user BE is investigated and an iterative bisection method is developed to determine the optimal solution to the max-min BE problem. Numerical results are presented for validating the proposed design’s performance, and a mode switching scheme is conceived for selecting a specific Mode = f OMA, NOMA g that maximizes the system’s BE.