Performance enhancement of NOMA multi-user networks with aerial reconfigurable intelligent surfaces and aerial relay

In this article, we propose a combination of multiple aerial reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (ARISs) with an aerial relay (AR) for improving the performance of multiple users adopting the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme. In particular, two groups of ARIS are utilized, one for aiding ground-to-air (G2A) communication and another one for aiding air-to-ground (A2G) communication. Mathematical formulas of outage probability (OP), throughput, and achievable capacity (AC) of every user in the proposed ARISs-AR-NOMA network are derived over the Nakagami-m channel. The propagation environment recommended for the fifth generation and beyond (5G/B5G) is applied to enhance the practical behavior of the proposed network. To confirm the performance enhancement, we compare the OP, throughput, and AC of the proposed system with the conventional AR-NOMA network (i.e., without ARISs). Numerical illustrations demonstrate the great benefits of the proposed ARISs-AR-NOMA network, its transmit power is dramatically lower than that of the conventional network. Moreover, the throughput and AC of the proposed network are considerably higher than the conventional network's. Based on the effect of key parameters and network behaviors, various effective solutions are recommended to enhance the performance of the proposed ARISs-AR-NOMA network. © 2024 Elsevier B.V.