  Active reconfigurable intelligent surface (ARIS) is a promising way to
compensate for multiplicative fading attenuation by amplifying and reflecting
event signals to selected users. This paper investigates the performance of
ARIS assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks over cascaded
Nakagami-m fading channels. The effects of hardware impairments (HIS) and
reflection coefficients on ARIS-NOMA networks with imperfect successive
interference cancellation (ipSIC) and perfect successive interference
cancellation (pSIC) are considered. More specifically, we develop new precise
and asymptotic expressions of outage probability and ergodic data rate with
ipSIC/pSIC for ARIS-NOMA-HIS networks. According to the approximated analyses,
the diversity orders and multiplexing gains for couple of non-orthogonal users
are attained in detail. Additionally, the energy efficiency of ARIS-NOMA-HIS
networks is surveyed in delay-limited and delay-tolerant transmission schemes.
The simulation findings are presented to demonstrate that: i) The outage
behaviors and ergodic data rates of ARIS-NOMA-HIS networks precede that of ARIS
aided orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and passive reconfigurable intelligent
surface (PRIS) aided OMA; ii) As the reflection coefficient of ARIS increases,
ARIS-NOMA-HIS networks have the ability to provide the strengthened outage
performance; and iii) ARIS-NOMA-HIS networks are more energy efficient than
ARIS/PRIS-OMA networks and conventional cooperative schemes.
