{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,7]],"date-time":"2025-11-07T09:54:27Z","timestamp":1762509267122,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":20,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,6,27]],"date-time":"2025-06-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1750982400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["62171126","62202007","2022A1515140137","KJ2021A0020"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62171126","62202007","2022A1515140137","KJ2021A0020"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation","award":["62171126","62202007","2022A1515140137","KJ2021A0020"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62171126","62202007","2022A1515140137","KJ2021A0020"]}]},{"name":"Key project of Anhui Provincial Department of Education","award":["62171126","62202007","2022A1515140137","KJ2021A0020"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62171126","62202007","2022A1515140137","KJ2021A0020"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Blind Interference Alignment (BIA) and Sparse Code Multiple Access (SCMA) offer the potential for massive connectivity but face limitations. Our recently proposed Sparsecode-and-BIA-based Multiple Access (SBMA) scheme synergizes their strengths, promising enhanced performance. SBMA leverages flexible user grouping (UG) strategies to effectively manage its unique combination of sparse code constraints and interference alignment requirements, thereby facilitating the fulfillment of diverse Quality of Service (QoS) demands. However, realizing SBMA\u2019s full potential requires efficient joint resource allocation (RA), user scheduling (US), and user grouping (UG). The inherent coupling of these factors within the SBMA framework complicates this task significantly, rendering RA\/US solutions designed purely for SCMA or BIA insufficient. This paper addresses this critical open issue. We first formulate the joint RA, US, and UG problems specifically for SBMA systems as an integer optimization task, aiming to maximize the number of users meeting QoS requirements. To tackle this NP-hard problem, we propose an effective algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), featuring a carefully designed update function tailored specifically for the joint US and UG decisions required in SBMA. Comprehensive simulations demonstrate show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the random-based scheme. Under certain conditions, it serves approximately 280% more users who meet their QoS requirements in high-SNR scenarios.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e27070691","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,1]],"date-time":"2025-07-01T07:42:06Z","timestamp":1751355726000},"page":"691","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Jointly Optimizing Resource Allocation, User Scheduling, and Grouping in SBMA Networks: A PSO Approach"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"27","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1143-9513","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jianjian","family":"Wu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"The School of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230601, China"},{"name":"Dongguan Key Lab of Artificial Information Network, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan 523808, China"},{"name":"Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent Disaster Prevention and Emergency Technologies for Urban Lifeline Engineering, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan 523808, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6863-9087","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Chanzi","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dongguan Key Lab of Artificial Information Network, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan 523808, China"},{"name":"Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent Disaster Prevention and Emergency Technologies for Urban Lifeline Engineering, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan 523808, China"},{"name":"The School of Electric Engineering and Intelligentization, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan 523808, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Xindi","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"The School of Internet, Anhui University, Hefei 230039, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3306-6148","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Chi-Tsun","family":"Cheng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"The Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing, and Mechatronics, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5015-7335","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Qingfeng","family":"Zhou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dongguan Key Lab of Artificial Information Network, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan 523808, China"},{"name":"Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent Disaster Prevention and Emergency Technologies for Urban Lifeline Engineering, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan 523808, China"},{"name":"The School of Electric Engineering and Intelligentization, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan 523808, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,6,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5354","DOI":"10.1109\/TIT.2012.2201349","article-title":"The Degree-of-Freedom Regions of MIMO Broadcast, Interference, and Cognitive Radio Channels With No CSIT","volume":"58","author":"Vaze","year":"2012","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. 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