Abstract
The power domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA) scheme has gained tremendous interest with the multiple access behavior for fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication. Although the overall performance is improved through accurate power distribution among users' signals, it depends on the user clustering strategy. Moreover, the PD-NOMA communication is not completely secured due to its broadcast nature, which is still a major problem. This paper presents a novel low-complexity short code-based technique utilized by the registered users and the 5G base station (gNodeB) for communication. By doing so, the PD-NOMA scheme is made secure from unregistered users or eavesdroppers. We proposed a three-step user clustering strategy that selects the best cluster among all the possible clusters to improve the overall performance. The proposed clustering strategy achieves a low outage probability in PD-NOMA systems. Moreover, it uses a multi-user decode and forward cooperative relaying scheme with PD-NOMA (Cop-PD-NOMA) to increase the coverage range of the gNodeB. In the multi-user Cop-PD-NOMA, the strong users (near users) are used as relay stations to aid the weak users (far users) by the decode and forward (D&F) technique. The proposed work provides a secure PD-NOMA network and the most effective user clustering approach during validation. The bit-error-rate (BER) comparisons demonstrate that multi-user cooperation outperforms single-user cooperation in Cop-PD-NOMA communication.