Blind equalization and multiuser detection in dispersive CDMA channels

The problem of blind demodulation of multiuser information symbols in a high-rate code-division multiple-access (CDMA) network in the presence of both multiple-access interference (MAI) and intersymbol interference (ISI) is considered. The dispersive CDMA channel is first cast into a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signal model framework. By applying the theory of blind MIMO channel identification and equalization, it is then shown that under certain conditions the multiuser information symbols can be recovered without any prior knowledge of the channel or the users' signature waveforms (including the desired user's signature waveform), although the algorithmic complexity of such an approach is prohibitively high. However, in practice, the signature waveform of the user of interest is always available at the receiver. It is shown that by incorporating this knowledge, the impulse response of each user's dispersive channel can be identified using a subspace method. It is further shown that based on the identified signal subspace parameters and the channel response, two linear detectors that are capable of suppressing both MAI and ISI, i.e., a zero-forcing detector and a minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) detector, can be constructed in closed form, at almost no extra computational cost. Data detection can then be furnished by applying these linear detectors (obtained blindly) to the received signal. The major contribution of this paper is the development of these subspace-based blind techniques for joint suppression of MAI and ISI in the dispersive CDMA channels.