Advantages of NOMA for Multi-User BackCom Networks

Ambient backscatter communication (BackCom) is faced with the challenge that a single BackCom device can occupy multiple orthogonal resource blocks unintentionally. As a result, in order to avoid co-channel interference, a conventional approach is to serve multiple BackCom devices in different time slots, which reduces both spectral efficiency and connectivity. This letter demonstrates that the use of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can efficiently improve the system throughput and support massive connectivity in ambient BackCom networks. In particular, two transceiver design approaches are developed in the letter to realize different tradeoffs between system performance and complexity.