A system and method for assigning users to a particular sub band in a given time slot in a NOMA system, where whichever pair of users corresponds to the smallest “candidate pair user throughput deviation value”, reflecting the aggregate of the respective difference between the average throughput across all users (K) and the known throughput of each of the two users under consideration (k1k2), and each user attributed to a sub-band other than the selected sub-band. User pairs for consideration may consider all possible pairs, or may be limited to candidate pairs satisfying together, or comprising one or both users who satisfy a criterion such as channel gain, distance to a target, throughput or a combination of some or all of these factors. The power allocated to each sub-band may be attributed by a waterfilling algorithm.