Abstract:This study proposes the integration of a cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (CNOMA) and improved hybrid simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (IHS SWIPT) protocol (termed as CNOMA-IHS) to enhance the spectral efficiency (SE) of a downlink (DL) CNOMA communication system. CNOMA-IHS scheme can enhance the ergodic sum capacity (ESC) and energy efficiency (EE) of DL CNOMA by transferring additional symbols towards the users and energize the relay operation as well without any additional resources (e.g., time slot/frequency/code). The analytical and simulation results indicate that the proposed CNOMA-IHS scheme outperforms other existing SWIPT-based schemes (e.g., CNOMA with hybrid SWIPT, CNOMA with power-splitting SWIPT, wireless-powered CNOMA, CNOMA with time switching SWIPT, and orthogonal multiple access with IHS SWIPT) in terms of the ESC. Moreover, the CNOMA-IHS scheme also enhances EE compared with other conventional TS-SWIPT-based schemes, which is also illustrated by the simulation results. In addition, the proposed CNOMA-IHS scheme with the considered EE optimization technique outplayed the proposed CNOMA-IHS scheme without EE optimization and other existing TS-SWIPT-based schemes in terms of EE.