Hybrid satellite terrestrial relay networks with cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access

In this letter, we investigate the outage probability (OP) and ergodic capacity of the downlink hybrid satellite terrestrial relay networks (HSTRNs) with a cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (C-NOMA) scheme, in which a user with better channel condition acts as a relay node and forwards information to other users, thus alleviating the masking effect of users with poor channel conditions in heavy shadowing. Specifically, the exact analytical expression for the OP of the considered system is derived. Furthermore, the ergodic capacity expression is also developed to facilitate performance evaluation of the proposed framework. Finally, the simulations are provided to show the impact of key parameters on the considered system and the superiority of introducing the C-NOMA scheme to the HSTRNs.