Active User Detection of Uplink Grant-Free SCMA in Frequency Selective Channel

Massive machine type communication (mMTC) is one of the three fifth generation mobile networking (5G) key usage scenarios, which is characterized by a very large number of connected devices typically transmitting a relatively low volume of non-delay sensitive data. To support the mMTC communication, an uplink (UL) grant-free sparse code multiple access (SCMA) system has been proposed. In this system, the knowledge of user equipments' (UEs') status should be obtained before decoding the data by a message passing algorithm (MPA). An existing solution is to use the compressive sensing (CS) theory to detect active UEs under the assumed condition of flat fading channel. But the assumed condition is not suitable for the frequency selective channel and will decrease the accuracy of active UEs detection. This paper proposes a new simple module named refined active UE detector (RAUD), which is based on frequency selective channel gain analyzing. By making full use of the channel gain and analyzing the difference between characteristic values of the two status of UEs, RAUD module can enhance the active UEs detection accuracy. Meanwhile, the addition of the proposed module has a negligible effect on the complexity of UL grant-free SCMA receiver.