Exploring the potential of 5G uplink communication: Synergistic integration of joint power control, user grouping,...

Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) techniques offer potential enhancements in spectral efficiency for 5G and 6G wireless networks, facilitating broader network access. Central to realizing optimal system performance are factors like joint power control, user grouping, and decoding order. This study investigates power control and user grouping to optimize spectral efficiency in NOMA uplink systems, aiming to reduce computational difficulty. While previous research on this integrated optimization has identified several near-optimal solutions, they often come with considerable system and computational overheads. To address this, this study employed an improved Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), a nature-inspired metaheuristic optimization method. Although GWO is effective, it can sometimes converge prematurely and might lack diversity. To enhance its performance, this study introduces a new version of GWO, integrating Competitive Learning, Q-learning, and Greedy Selection. Competitive learning adopts agent competition, balancing exploration and exploitation and preserving diversity. Q-learning guides the search based on past experiences, enhancing adaptability and preventing redundant exploration of sub-optimal regions. Greedy selection ensures the retention of the best solutions after each iteration. The synergistic integration of these three components substantially enhances the performance of the standard GWO. This algorithm was used to manage power and user-grouping in NOMA systems, aiming to strengthen system performance while restricting computational demands. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm was validated through numerical evaluations. Simulated outcomes revealed that when applied to the joint challenge in NOMA uplink systems, it surpasses the spectral efficiency of conventional orthogonal multiple access. Moreover, the proposed approach demonstrated superior performance compared to the standard GWO and other state-of-the-art algorithms, achieving reduced system complexity under identical constraints.