Implementable Wireless Access for B3G Networks - III: Complexity Reducing Transceiver Structures

This article presents a comprehensive overview of some of the research conducted within Mobile VCE’s Core Wireless Access Research Programme,1 a key focus of which has naturally been on MIMO transceivers. The series of articles offers a coherent view of how the work was structured and comprises a compilation of material that has been presented in detail elsewhere (see references within the article). In this article MIMO channel measurements, analysis, and modeling, which were presented previously in the first article in this series of four, are utilized to develop compact and distributed antenna arrays. Parallel activities led to research into low-complexity MIMO single-user spacetime coding techniques, as well as SISO and MIMO multi-user CDMA-based transceivers for B3G systems. As well as feeding into the industry’s in-house research program, significant extensions of this work are now in hand, within Mobile VCE’s own core activity, aiming toward securing major improvements in delivery efficiency in future wireless systems through crosslayer operation

Asynchronous CDMA Systems with Random Spreading-Part I: Fundamental Limits

Spectral efficiency for asynchronous code division multiple access (CDMA) with random spreading is calculated in the large system limit allowing for arbitrary chip waveforms and frequency-flat fading. Signal to interference and noise ratios (SINRs) for suboptimal receivers, such as the linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) detectors, are derived. The approach is general and optionally allows even for statistics obtained by under-sampling the received signal. All performance measures are given as a function of the chip waveform and the delay distribution of the users in the large system limit. It turns out that synchronizing users on a chip level impairs performance for all chip waveforms with bandwidth greater than the Nyquist bandwidth, e.g., positive roll-off factors. For example, with the pulse shaping demanded in the UMTS standard, user synchronization reduces spectral efficiency up to 12% at 10 dB normalized signal-to-noise ratio. The benefits of asynchronism stem from the finding that the excess bandwidth of chip waveforms actually spans additional dimensions in signal space, if the users are de-synchronized on the chip-level. The analysis of linear MMSE detectors shows that the limiting interference effects can be decoupled both in the user domain and in the frequency domain such that the concept of the effective interference spectral density arises. This generalizes and refines Tse and Hanly's concept of effective interference. In Part II, the analysis is extended to any linear detector that admits a representation as multistage detector and guidelines for the design of low complexity multistage detectors with universal weights are provided

Blind user detection in doubly-dispersive DS/CDMA channels

In this work, we consider the problem of detecting the presence of a new user in a direct-sequence/code-division-multiple-access (DS/CDMA) system with a doubly-dispersive fading channel, and we propose a novel blind detection strategy which only requires knowledge of the spreading code of the user to be detected, but no prior information as to the time-varying channel impulse response and the structure of the multiaccess interference. The proposed detector has a bounded constant false alarm rate (CFAR) under the design assumptions, while providing satisfactory detection performance even in the presence of strong cochannel interference and high user mobility.Comment: Accepted for publication on IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

Adaptive DS-CDMA multiuser detection for time variant frequency selective Rayleigh fading channel

The current digital wireless mobile system such as IS-95, which is based on direct sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) technology, will not be able to meet the growing demands for multimedia service due to low information exchanging rate. Its capacity is also limited by multiple accessed interference (MAI) signals. This work focuses on the development of adaptive algorithms for multiuser detection (MUD) and interference suppression for wideband direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems over time-variant frequency selective fading channels. In addition, channel acquisition and delay estimation techniques are developed to combat the uncertainty introduced by the wireless propagation channel. This work emphasizes fast and simple techniques that can meet practical needs for high data rate signal detection. Most existing literature is not suitable for the large delay spread in wideband systems due to high computational/ hardware complexity. A de-biasing decorrelator is developed whose computational complexity is greatly reduced without sacrificing performance. An adaptive bootstrap symbolbased signal separator is also proposed for a time-variant channel. These detectors achieve MUD for asynchronous, large delay spread, fading channels without training sequences. To achieve high data rate communication, a finite impulse response (FIR) filter based detector is presented for M-ary QAM modulated signals in a multipath Rayleigh fading channel. It is shown that the proposed detector provides a stable performance for QAM signal detection with unknown fading and phase shift. It is also shown that this detector can be easily extended to the reception of any M-ary quadrature modulated signal. A minimum variance decorrelating (MVD) receiver with adaptive channel estimator is presented in this dissertation. It provides comparable performance to a linear MMSE receiver even in a deep fading environment and can be implemented blindly. Using the MVD receiver as a building-block, an adaptive multistage parallel interference cancellation (PIC) scheme and a successive interference cancellation (SIC) scheme were developed. The total number of stages is kept at a minimum as a result of the accurate estimating of the interfering users at the earliest stages, which reduces the implementation complexity, as well as the processing delay. Jointly with the MVD receiver, a new transmit diversity (TD) scheme, called TD-MVD, is proposed. This scheme improves the performance without increasing the bandwidth. Unlike other TD techniques, this TDMVD scheme has the inherent advantage to overcome asynchronous multipath transmission. It brings flexibility in the design of TD antenna systems without restrict signal coordination among those multiple transmissions, and applicable for both existing and next generation of CDMA systems. A maximum likelihood based delay and channel estimation algorithm with reduced computational complexity is proposed. This algorithm uses a diagonal simplicity technique as well as the asymptotically uncorrelated property of the received signal in the frequency domain. In combination with oversampling, this scheme does not suffer from a singularity problem and the performance quickly approaches the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) while maintaining a computational complexity that is as low as the order of the signal dimension

Fractionally sampled decorrelating detectors for time-varying rayleigh fading CDMA channels

In this dissertation, we propose novel decorrelating multiuser detectors in DSCDMA time-varying frequency-nonselective and frequency-selective fading channels and analyze their performance. We address the common shortcomings of existing multiuser detectors in a mobile environment, such as detector complexity and the error floor. An analytical approach is employed almost exclusively and Monte Carlo simulation is used to confirm the theoretical results. Practical channel models, such as Jakes\u27 and Markovian, are adopted in the numerical examples. The proposed detectors are of the decorrelating type and utilize fractional sampling to simultaneously achieve two goals: (1) the novel realization of a decorrelator with lower computational complexity and shorter processing latency; and (2) the significant reduction of the probability of error floor associated with time-varying fading. The analysis of the impact of imperfect power control on IS-95 multiple access interference is carried out first and the ineffectiveness of IS-95 power control in a mobile radio environment is demonstrated. Fractionally-spaced bit-by-bit decorrelator structures for the frequency-nonselective and frequency-selective channels are then proposed. The matrix singularity problem associated with decorrelation is also addressed, and its solution is suggested. A decorrelating receiver employing differentially coherent detection for an asynchronous CDMA, frequency-nonselective time-varying Rayleigh fading channel is proposed. A maximum likelihood detection principle is applied at the fractionally spaced decorrelator output, resulting in a significantly reduced error floor. For coherent detection, a novel single-stage and two-stage decision feedback (DF) maximum a posteriori (MAP) channel estimator is proposed. These estimators are applicable to a channel with an arbitrary spaced-time correlation function. The fractionally-spaced decorrelating detector is then modified and extended to a frequency-selective time-varying fading channel, and is shown to be capable of simultaneously eliminating MAI, ISI, and path cross-correlation interference. The implicit equivalent frequency diversity is exploited through multipath combining, and the effective time diversity is achieved by fractional sampling for significant performance improvement. The significance of the outcome of this research is in the design of new lower complexity multiuser detectors that do not exhibit the usual deficiencies and limitations associated with a time-varying fading and multipath CDMA mobile environment

Code-timing synchronization in DS-CDMA systems using space-time diversity

The synchronization of a desired user transmitting a known training sequence in a direct-sequence (DS) asynchronous code-division multiple-access (CDMA) sys-tem is addressed. It is assumed that the receiver consists of an arbitrary antenna array and works in a near-far, frequency-nonselective, slowly fading channel. The estimator that we propose is derived by applying the maximum likelihood (ML) principle to a signal model in which the contribution of all the interfering compo-nents (e.g., multiple-access interference, external interference and noise) is modeled as a Gaussian term with an unknown and arbitrary space-time correlation matrix. The main contribution of this paper is the fact that the estimator makes eÆcient use of the structure of the signals in both the space and time domains. Its perfor-mance is compared with the Cramer-Rao Bound, and with the performance of other methods proposed recently that also employ an antenna array but only exploit the structure of the signals in one of the two domains, while using the other simply as a means of path diversity. It is shown that the use of the temporal and spatial structures is necessary to achieve synchronization in heavily loaded systems or in the presence of directional external interference.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Multi-user detection for multi-rate DS/CDMA systems

Wireless cellular communication is witnessing a rapid growth in market, technology and range of services. Current and future demands for wireless communication services motivate the need for handling multi-media traffic types. In a multimedia communication system, users with different and even time-varying rates and quality of services (QoS) requirements, such as voice, image and data, must be accommodated. The use of Spread Spectrum modulation with Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology is an attractive approach for economical spectrally efficient and high quality cellular and personal communication services. This dissertation explores the technologies of applying different interference cancellation techniques to multi-rate CDMA systems that serve users with different QoS. Multiple Access Interference (MAI) and multipath propagation are the major issues in wireless communication systems. It is also true for multi-rate CDMA systems. Multi-user detection has been shown to be effective in combating the near-far problem and providing superior performance over conventional detection method. In this dissertation, we combine both linear minimum mean squared error (LMMSE) detector, nonlinear decision feedback detector, with other signal processing techniques, such as array processing and multipath combining, to create effective near-far resistant detectors for multi-rate CDMA systems. Firstly, we propose MMSE receivers for synchronous multi-rate CDMA system and compare the performance with the corresponding multi-rate decorrelating detectors. The multi-rate decorrelating detector is optimally near-far resistant and easy to implement. The proposed linear MMSE multi-rate receiver can be adaptively implemented only with the knowledge of the desired user. Due to the fact that MMSE detector offers best trade-off between the MAI cancellation and noise variance enhancement, it is shown that multi-rate MMSE receiver can offer better performance than the multi-rate decorrelator when the interfering users\u27 Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) is relatively low comparing to the desired user\u27s SNR. Secondly, the asynchronous multi-rate CDMA system, we propose multi-rate multi-shoot decorrelating detectors and multi-rate multi-shot MMSE detectors. The performance of multi-shot detectors can be improved monotonically with increasing the number of stacked bits, but a great computational complexity is going to be introduced in order to get better performance. A debiasing method is introduced to multi-rate multi-shot linear detectors. Debiasing method optimizes multi-rate detectors based on the multi-rate multi-shot model. Debiasing multi-shot MMSE detector for multi-rate signals can offer performance than the corresponding debiasing multi-shot decorrelating detector. Thirdly, we propose linear space-time receivers for multi-rate CDMA systems. The minimum mean-squared error criteria is used. We perform a comparative study on the multi-rate receiver which uses either multipath (temporal) processing or array (spatial) processing, and the one which uses both array and multipath (space-time) processing. The space-time receiver for the multi-rate CDMA signals give us the potential of improving the capacity of multi-rate systems. The space-time processing combined with multiuser detection have the advantages of combating multipath fading through temporal processing, reducing MAI through MMSE method and provide antenna or diversity gain through spatial processing and increasing the capacity of the multi-rate CDMA systems. Lastly, the group-wise interference cancellation methods are proposed for multi-rate CDMA signals. The non-linear decision feedback detection (DFD) schemes are used in the proposed receivers. The proposed interference cancellation schemes benefit from the nature of the unequal received amplitudes for multi-rate CDMA signals. Users with same data rate are grouped together. Users with the highest data-rate are detected first. Interference between the groups is cancelled in a successive order. The results show that the group-wise MMSE DFD yields better performance than multi-rate linear MMSE detector and multi-rate decorrelating detector, especially for highly loaded CDMA systems