Outage of cooperative NOMA with an energy harvesting relay in an underlay cognitive radio network

Summary This paper analyzes the performance of a cooperative nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) in an underlay cognitive radio network aided by an energy harvesting relay. A secondary source transmits signal for two users, where a near user acts as a relay for the far user. The far user applies the selection combining (SC) approach on the signals which were relayed by the near user and received via direct path from the secondary source. We analytically derive the outage probability (OP) of each user separately, the overall system OP, and the throughput of the system. The impact of the power allocation coefficient of NOMA and energy harvesting parameters on outage is indicated. Further, the performance of the network is investigated with imperfection in successive interference cancellation (SIC), maximal ratio combining (MRC) at relay, and Nakagami‐m fading. The results derived analytically are supported by simulation in MATLAB.