Joint Communication and Computation Resource Optimization for NOMA-Assisted Mobile Edge Computing

Mobile-edge computing (MEC) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been envisioned as two promising technologies in the future wireless networks. In this paper, we concentrate on the joint computation offloading and result downloading strategy for a NOMA-assisted MEC system, where uplink/downlink NOMA is used for computation task offloading or result downloading, respectively. The energy consumption minimization problem is formulated with joint optimization of time assignment, power control, CPU frequency, and computation offloading scheme. By exploiting block coordinate descent (BCD) method, we develop a joint communication and computation resource allocation algorithm to address the original nonconvex problem. Specifically, the optimal solution is obtained in closed form. Furthermore, extensive numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the NOMA-assisted MEC system, when compared to the OMA-based scheme.