Design and Implementation of a NOMA-Enabled Communication System

Abstract

The team designed and implemented a power-domain NOMA prototype operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band using a discrete IF-based RF architecture. The transmitter consists of a DE1-SoC FPGA performing real-time NOMA baseband processing, an AD9742 DAC, an RF transformer, a low-pass filter, an HMC213 mixer, and an ADF4351 frequency synthesizer, all mounted on a custom two-layer PCB. The receiver was implemented using an NI USRP-2932 software-defined radio with a 10 dB LNA, running a GNU Radio receiver chain that performs carrier recovery, timing recovery, and SIC in software. Three custom patch antennas were designed, simulated in Advanced Design System (ADS), and fabricated in-house for operation at 2.47 GHz.