Multi-User Joint Detection Using Bi-Directional Deep Neural Network Framework in NOMA-OFDM System

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has great potential to implement the fifth-generation (5G) requirements of wireless communication. For a NOMA traditional detection method, successive interference cancellation (SIC) plays a vital role at the receiver side for both uplink and downlink transmission. Due to the complex multipath channel environment and prorogation of error problems, the traditional SIC method has a limited performance. To overcome the limitation of traditional detection methods, the deep-learning method has an advantage for the highly efficient tool. In this paper, a deep neural network which has bi-directional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) for multiuser uplink channel estimation (CE) and signal detection of the originally transmitted signal is proposed. Unlike the traditional CE schemes, the proposed Bi-LSTM model can directly recover multiuser transmission signals suffering from channel distortion. In the offline training stage, the Bi-LTSM model is trained using simulation data based on channel statistics. Then, the trained model is used to recover the transmitted symbols in the online deployment stage. In the simulation results, the performance of the proposed model is compared with the convolutional neural network model and traditional CE schemes such as MMSE and LS. It is shown that the proposed method provides feasible improvements in performance in terms of symbol-error rate and signal-to-noise ratio, making it suitable for 5G wireless communication and beyond.