Joint Communication, Sensing, and Multi-tier Computing: A NOMA-aided Framework

Abstract

A non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-aided joint communication, sensing, and multi-tier computing (JCSMC) framework is proposed. In this framework, a multi-functional base station (BS) simultaneously carries out target sensing and provide edge computing services to the nearby users. To enhance the computation efficiency, the multi-tier computing structure is exploited, where the BS can further offload the computation tasks to a powerful Cloud server (CS). The potential benefits of employing NOMA in the proposed JCSMC framework are investigated. Based on the proposed framework, the transmit beamformer of the BS and computing resource allocation among the BS and CS are jointly optimized to maximize the computation rate subject to the communication-computation causality and the sensing quality constraints. A weighted minimum mean square error based alternating optimization algorithm is proposed to solve the corresponding non-convex optimization problem. Fi-nally, numerical results show the significant performance gain achieved by the proposed schemes over the benchmark schemes.