School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China
Ren Ping Liu
School of Electrical and Data Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia
Xin Su
Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Research Institute of Information Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Mingyao Peng
Laboratory of Broadband Wireless Access, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, China
Chang Wang
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Communications, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
Jiajia Mei
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Communications, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is one promising technology, which provides high system capacity, low latency, and massive connectivity, to address several challenges in the fifth-generation wireless systems. In this paper, we first reveal that the NOMA techniques have evolved from single-carrier NOMA (SC-NOMA) into multi-carrier NOMA (MC-NOMA). Then, we comprehensively investigated on the basic principles, enabling schemes and evaluations of the two most promising MC-NOMA techniques, namely sparse code multiple access (SCMA) and pattern division multiple access (PDMA). Meanwhile, we consider that the research challenges of SCMA and PDMA might be addressed with the stimulation of the advanced and matured progress in SC-NOMA. Finally, yet importantly, we investigate the emerging applications, and point out the future research trends of the MC-NOMA techniques, which could be straightforwardly inspired by the various deployments of SC-NOMA.
