Orthogonal vs Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access with Finite Input Alphabet and Finite Bandwidth

For a two-user Gaussian multiple access channel (GMAC), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), a well known orthogonal-multiple-access (O-MA) scheme has been preferred to non-orthogonal-multiple-access (NO-MA) schemes since FDMA can achieve the sum-capacity of the channel with only single-user decoding complexity [Chapter 14, Elements of Information Theory by Cover and Thomas]. However, with finite alphabets, in this paper, we show that NO-MA is better than OMA for a two-user GMAC. We plot the constellation constrained (CC) capacity regions of a two-user GMAC with FDMA and time division multiple access (TDMA) and compare them with the CC capacity regions with trellis coded multiple access (TCMA), a recently introduced NO-MA scheme. Unlike the Gaussian alphabets case, it is shown that the CC capacity region with FDMA is strictly contained inside the CC capacity region with TCMA. In particular, for a given bandwidth, the gap between the CC capacity regions with TCMA and FDMA is shown to increase with the increase in the average power constraint. Also, for a given power constraint, the gap between the CC capacity regions with TCMA and FDMA is shown to decrease with the increase in the bandwidth. Hence, for finite alphabets, a NOMA scheme such as TCMA is better than the well known OMAC schemes, FDMA and TDMA which makes NO-MA schemes worth pursuing in practice for a two-user GMAC.