Cooperative diversity in CDMA networks

Spatial diversity is one of the well known diversity methods used in combating fading channels. Recently, cooperative diversity has been widely studied in literature as a spatial diversity technique. Different from multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, each user in the cooperative network is employed with a single transmit/receive antenna. In this thesis, we propose a cooperative diversity technique for asynchronous direct sequence code division multiple access (D8-CDMA) over frequency selective slow fading environment. First we assume the single cooperation relay case, where the bit-error-rate performance of the system is studied for both cases of perfect and imperfect inter-user channel (user-relay link). In order to mitigate the multi-access interference (MAI), decorrelator multiuser detectors are introduced at both relay and base station sides. Its effect on performance is studied and compared to the performance of the conventional matched filter receiver. Additionally, the performance of the system is studied and compared for different multi-path diversity scenarios in the inter-user and uplink channel. Furthermore, a coded multi-relay cooperation technique is proposed, where channel coding is introduced to minimize errors over the inter-user channel. All users are embedded with convolutional encoder and a Viterbi decoder. We study the performance of the coded system for different number of cooperating relays and over different multi-path diversity scenarios. Both simulation and analytical results are compared. Finally, we conclude that for a communication network to benefit from the cooperation diversity technique, a reliable communication link between active users and the cooperating relays should be secured (inter-user channel). We show that for an active user cooperating with V relays over a P -path frequency-selective fading channel, the expected diversity degree is P ( V +1

High Capacity CDMA and Collaborative Techniques

The thesis investigates new approaches to increase the user capacity and improve the error performance of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) by employing adaptive interference cancellation and collaborative spreading and space diversity techniques. Collaborative Coding Multiple Access (CCMA) is also investigated as a separate technique and combined with CDMA. The advantages and shortcomings of CDMA and CCMA are analysed and new techniques for both the uplink and downlink are proposed and evaluated. Multiple access interference (MAI) problem in the uplink of CDMA is investigated first. The practical issues of multiuser detection (MUD) techniques are reviewed and a novel blind adaptive approach to interference cancellation (IC) is proposed. It exploits the constant modulus (CM) property of digital signals to blindly suppress interference during the despreading process and obtain amplitude estimation with minimum mean squared error for use in cancellation stages. Two new blind adaptive receiver designs employing successive and parallel interference cancellation architectures using the CM algorithm (CMA) referred to as ‘CMA-SIC’ and ‘BA-PIC’, respectively, are presented. These techniques have shown to offer near single user performance for large number of users. It is shown to increase the user capacity by approximately two fold compared with conventional IC receivers. The spectral efficiency analysis of the techniques based on output signal-to interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) also shows significant gain in data rate. Furthermore, an effective and low complexity blind adaptive subcarrier combining (BASC) technique using a simple gradient descent based algorithm is proposed for Multicarrier-CDMA. It suppresses MAI without any knowledge of channel amplitudes and allows large number of users compared with equal gain and maximum ratio combining techniques normally used in practice. New user collaborative schemes are proposed and analysed theoretically and by simulations in different channel conditions to achieve spatial diversity for uplink of CCMA and CDMA. First, a simple transmitter diversity and its equivalent user collaborative diversity techniques for CCMA are designed and analysed. Next, a new user collaborative scheme with successive interference cancellation for uplink of CDMA referred to as collaborative SIC (C-SIC) is investigated to reduce MAI and achieve improved diversity. To further improve the performance of C-SIC under high system loading conditions, Collaborative Blind Adaptive SIC (C-BASIC) scheme is proposed. It is shown to minimize the residual MAI, leading to improved user capacity and a more robust system. It is known that collaborative diversity schemes incur loss in throughput due to the need of orthogonal time/frequency slots for relaying source’s data. To address this problem, finally a novel near-unity-rate scheme also referred to as bandwidth efficient collaborative diversity (BECD) is proposed and evaluated for CDMA. Under this scheme, pairs of users share a single spreading sequence to exchange and forward their data employing a simple superposition or space-time encoding methods. At the receiver collaborative joint detection is performed to separate each paired users’ data. It is shown that the scheme can achieve full diversity gain at no extra bandwidth as inter-user channel SNR becomes high. A novel approach of ‘User Collaboration’ is introduced to increase the user capacity of CDMA for both the downlink and uplink. First, collaborative group spreading technique for the downlink of overloaded CDMA system is introduced. It allows the sharing of the same single spreading sequence for more than one user belonging to the same group. This technique is referred to as Collaborative Spreading CDMA downlink (CS-CDMA-DL). In this technique T-user collaborative coding is used for each group to form a composite codeword signal of the users and then a single orthogonal sequence is used for the group. At each user’s receiver, decoding of composite codeword is carried out to extract the user’s own information while maintaining a high SINR performance. To improve the bit error performance of CS-CDMA-DL in Rayleigh fading conditions, Collaborative Space-time Spreading (C-STS) technique is proposed by combining the collaborative coding multiple access and space-time coding principles. A new scheme for uplink of CDMA using the ‘User Collaboration’ approach, referred to as CS-CDMA-UL is presented next. When users’ channels are independent (uncorrelated), significantly higher user capacity can be achieved by grouping multiple users to share the same spreading sequence and performing MUD on per group basis followed by a low complexity ML decoding at the receiver. This approach has shown to support much higher number of users than the available sequences while also maintaining the low receiver complexity. For improved performance under highly correlated channel conditions, T-user collaborative coding is also investigated within the CS-CDMA-UL system

Performance of Cooperative CDMA with Successive Interference Cancellation

We investigate the BER and achievable rate of user cooperation schemes in practical uplink CDMA channels with multiple access interference (MAI). It is shown that when the system loading increases, cooperation alone becomes less effective if simple matched filters (MF) followed by combining from each partners' signals are employed for obtaining decision variables. By performing successive interference cancellation (SIC) for each received signals from the partners and then using the maximum ratio combining technique, the diversity gain and hence the uplink capacity is enhanced. We further analyse the output decision variable signals and also provide a simplified bound on achievable rate based on Gaussian Approximation of MAI signals. Illustrative simulation results are given, which confirm that the proposed scheme using SIC achieves much improved diversity and error performance under high system loading and near far conditions