Max-Min Fairness for Uplink NOMA Systems With Finite Blocklength

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been viewed as a promising technology to meet access and throughput demands in wireless communications. To apply NOMA techniques in practical scenarios, finite blocklength (FBL) has to be considered. In this article, we explore the max-min fairness for uplink FBL-NOMA. Specifically, we consider the joint optimization of the power control and transmission rates to improve the max-min effective throughput and simultaneously provide the quality-of-service (QoS) guarantee of transmission reliability for each user. Though the formulated problem appears as a difficult non-convex problem, we obtain the globally optimal solution by first determining the optimal transmission rates for given powers and then obtaining the optimal power control through a line search. We further develop a simplified algorithm to obtain the nearly optimal performance. The superiority of our proposed algorithms is demonstrated via simulation results.