Multiuser receivers for CDMA systems in Rayleigh fading channels

Multiuser demodulation in relatively fast fading channels is analyzed. The optimal maximum likelihood sequence detection (MLSD) receiver is derived and a general suboptimal receiver to approximate the MLSD is proposed. The performance of the parallel interference cancellation (PIC) and decorrelating receivers is compared. The PIC receiver is demonstrated to achieve better performance in known channels than the decorrelating receiver, but it is observed to be more sensitive to the channel coefficient estimation errors than the decorrelator. At high channel loads the PIC receiver suffers from bit error rate (BER) saturation, whereas the decorrelating receiver does not. The performance of data-aided (DA) and decision-directed (DD) multiuser channel estimation is also compared. DA channel estimation is shown to be more robust than DD channel estimation, which may suffer from BER saturation caused by hangups at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The impact of channel estimation filter impulse response on the BER is studied by comparing optimal and suboptimal channel estimation filters. The implementation complexity of the decorrelating and PIC receivers is compared in terms of required floating point operations and clock cycles in a practical communication scenario. It is observed that the PIC receiver is only moderately more complex to implement than the conventional matched filter bank receiver, whereas the decorrelating receiver is significantly more complex.