Resource Allocation in NOMA-Based Fog Radio Access Networks

In the wake of growth in intelligent mobile devices and wide usage of bandwidth-hungry applications in mobile Internet, the demand for wireless data traffic and ubiquitous mobile broadband is rapidly increasing. Because of these developments, the research on next generation networks presents an accelerative tendency on a global scale. Edge computing is drawing lots of attention for reducing the time delay and improving the quality of service for networks. F-RAN is an emergent architecture that makes full use of edge computing and distributed storing capabilities in edge devices. In this article, we propose an architecture of NOMA-based F-RANs that has strong capability of edge computing and can meet the heterogeneous requirements in 5G/6G systems. NOMA with SIC is regarded as a critical multi-user access technology. In NOMA, more than one user can access the same time, code domain, and frequency resources. By assigning different power levels to multiple users and implementing SIC, multi-user detection can be achieved. In this article, we provide a description of the NOMAbased F-RANs architecture, and discuss the resource allocation in it. We focus on the power and subchannel allocation in consideration of using NOMA and edge caching. Simulation results show that the proposed NOMA-based F-RANs architecture and the resource management mechanisms can achieve high net utility for the RANs.