  In this paper, the performance of multiple-input multiple-output
non-orthogonal multiple access (MIMO-NOMA) is investigated when multiple users
are grouped into a cluster. The superiority of MIMO-NOMA over MIMO orthogonal
multiple access (MIMO-OMA) in terms of both sum channel capacity and ergodic
sum capacity is proved analytically. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the
more users are admitted to a cluster, the lower is the achieved sum rate, which
illustrates the tradeoff between the sum rate and maximum number of admitted
users. On this basis, a user admission scheme is proposed, which is optimal in
terms of both sum rate and number of admitted users when the
signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio thresholds of the users are equal. When
these thresholds are different, the proposed scheme still achieves good
performance in balancing both criteria. Moreover, under certain conditions,it
maximizes the number of admitted users. In addition, the complexity of the
proposed scheme is linear to the number of users per cluster. Simulation
results verify the superiority of MIMO-NOMA over MIMO-OMA in terms of both sum
rate and user fairness, as well as the effectiveness of the proposed user
admission scheme.
