Cooperative NOMA Short-Packet Communications in Flat Rayleigh Fading Channels

A two-user downlink cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) short-packet communication network is investigated in flat Rayleigh fading channels, where a central user cooperatively relays the signals intended to a cell-edge user. To derive the average block error rate (BLER) of the central user, unlike the work in the literature where the product term is neglected, a new method that works well for the whole range of power allocation factor is proposed. Furthermore, the average BLER of the cell-edge user is theoretically derived. Numerical results demonstrate that while remaining almost the same average BLER for the central user, the cell-edge user in our proposed cooperative NOMA network achieves lower average BLER than those in the conventional NOMA network and the cooperative orthogonal multiple access network.