This letter considers a legacy massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) network, in which spatial beams have been preconfigured for near-field users, and proposes to use the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) principle to serve additional far-field users by exploiting the spatial beams preconfigured for the legacy near-field users. Our results reveal that the coexistence between near-field and far-field communications can be effectively supported via NOMA, and that the performance of NOMA-assisted massive MIMO can be efficiently improved by increasing the number of antennas at the base station.
@article{arxiv.2309.09185,
title = {NOMA-Based Coexistence of Near-Field and Far-Field Massive MIMO Communications},
author = {Zhiguo Ding and Robert Schober and H. Vincent Poor},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.09185},
year = {2023}
}