Joint Beam Management and Power Allocation in THz-NOMA Networks

Abstract: This paper investigates how to apply non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) as an add-on in terahertz (THz) networks. In particular, prior to the implementation of NOMA, it is assumed that there exists a legacy THz system, where spatial beams have already been configured to serve legacy primary users. The aim of this paper is to study how these pre-configured spatial beams can be used as a type of bandwidth resources, on which additional secondary users are served without degrading the performance of the legacy primary users. A joint beam management and power allocation problem is first formulated as a mixed combinatorial non-convex optimization problem, and then solved by two methods with different performance-complexity tradeoffs, one based on the branch and bound method and the other based on successive convex approximation. Both analytical and simulation results are presented to illustrate the new features of beam-based resource allocation in THz-NOMA networks and also demonstrate that those pre-configured spatial beams can be employed to improve the system throughput and connectivity in a spectrally efficient manner.