Spatial Modulation Assisted Multi-Antenna Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

Multi-antenna non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a promising technique to significantly improve the spectral efficiency and support massive access, which has received considerable interests from academic and industry. This article first briefly introduces the basic idea of conventional multi-antenna NOMA technique, and then discusses the key limitations, namely, the high complexity of successive interference cancellation (SIC) and the lack of fairness between the user with a strong channel gain and the user with a weak channel gain. To address these problems, this article proposes a novel spatial modulation (SM) assisted multi-antenna NOMA technique, which avoids the use of SIC and is able to completely cancel intra-cluster interference. Furthermore, simulation results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed novel technique compared to the conventional multi-antenna NOMA. Finally, this article points out the key challenges and sheds light on the future research directions of the SM assisted multi-antenna NOMA technique.