Chapter 1 introduces the capacity challenge faced by modern wireless communication systems and presents ultra-dense wireless networks as an appealing solution to address it. Moreover, it provides background on the small cell concept – the fundamental building block of an ultra-dense wireless network – describing its main characteristics, benefits and drawbacks. This chapter also presents the structure of the book and the fundamental concepts required for its systematic understanding.

This chapter investigates the application non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) in heterogeneous ultra-dense networks (HUDNs).Particularly, we propose a unified NOMA framework first. Then the applications of the proposed unified NOMA framework in HUDNs will be discussed. With the fact that small cells are densely deployed and the non-orthogonality of resource sharing, the system suffers severe interference. In this chapter, we identify the key challenges in the unified NOMA enabled HUDNs, especially for user association and resource allocation. In addition, we carry out the related case studies for the proposed unified NOMA enabled HUDNs including the user association based on matching theory and resource allocation based on optimization techniques. Furthermore, some critical insights will be provided for the design of NOMA enabled HUDNs, which can promote network access capacity in the next generation of communication systems.