A Primer on Rate-Splitting Multiple Access: Tutorial, Myths, and Frequently Asked Questions

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA) has emerged as a powerful multiple access, interference management, and multi-user strategy for next generation communication systems. In this tutorial, we depart from the orthogonal multiple access (OMA) versus non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) discussion held in 5G, and the conventional multi-user linear precoding approach used in space-division multiple access (SDMA), multi-user and massive MIMO in 4G and 5G, and show how multi-user communications and multiple access design for 6G and beyond should be intimately related to the fundamental problem of interference management. We start from foundational principles of interference management and rate-splitting, and progressively delineate RSMA frameworks for downlink, uplink, and multi-cell networks. We show that, in contrast to past generations of multiple access techniques (OMA, NOMA, SDMA), RSMA offers numerous benefits. We then discuss how those benefits translate into numerous opportunities for RSMA in over forty different applications and scenarios of 6G. We finally address common myths and answer frequently asked questions, opening the discussions to interesting future research avenues. Supported by the numerous benefits and applications, the tutorial concludes on the underpinning role played by RSMA in next generation networks, which should inspire future research, development, and standardization of RSMA-aided communication for 6G.