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

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

Channel estimation and signal enhancement for DS-CDMA systems

This dissertation focuses on topics of Bayesian-based multiuser detection, space-time (S-T) transceiver design, and S-T channel parameter estimation for direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems. Using the Bayesian framework, various linear and simplified nonlinear multiuser detectors are proposed, and their performances are analyzed. The simplified non-linear Bayesian solutions can bridge the performance gap between sub-optimal linear multiuser detectors and the optimum multiuser detector. To further improve the system capacity and performance, S-T transceiver design approaches with complexity constraint are investigated. Novel S-T receivers of low-complexity that jointly use the temporal code-signature and the spatial signature are proposed. Our solutions, which lead to generalized near-far resistant S-T RAKE receivers, achieve better interference suppression than the existing S-T RAKE receivers. From transmitter side, we also proposed a transmit diversity (TD) technique in combination with differential detection for the DS-CDMA systems. It is shown that the proposed S-T TD scheme in combination with minimum variance distortionless response transceiver (STTD+MVDR) is near-far resistant and outperforms the conventional STTD and matched filter based (STTD+MF) transceiver scheme. Obtaining channel state information (CSI) is instrumental to optimum S-T transceiver design in wireless systems. Another major focus of this dissertation is to estimate the S-T channel parameters. We proposed an asymptotic, joint maximum likelihood (ML) method of estimating multipath channel parameters for DS-CDMA systems. An iterative estimator is proposed to further simplify the computation. Analytical and simulation results show that the iterative estimation scheme is near-far resistant for both time delays and DOAs. And it reaches the corresponding CRBs after a few iterations

Spectral Efficiency of Random Time-Hopping CDMA

Traditionally paired with impulsive communications, Time-Hopping CDMA (TH-CDMA) is a multiple access technique that separates users in time by coding their transmissions into pulses occupying a subset of $N_\mathsf{s}$ chips out of the total $N$ included in a symbol period, in contrast with traditional Direct-Sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA) where $N_\mathsf{s}=N$. This work analyzes TH-CDMA with random spreading, by determining whether peculiar theoretical limits are identifiable, with both optimal and sub-optimal receiver structures, in particular in the archetypal case of sparse spreading, that is, $N_\mathsf{s}=1$. Results indicate that TH-CDMA has a fundamentally different behavior than DS-CDMA, where the crucial role played by energy concentration, typical of time-hopping, directly relates with its intrinsic "uneven" use of degrees of freedom.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figure

Beamforming and Multiuser Detection in CDMA Systems with External Interferences

Multiuser detection has been investigated to mitigate the near-far effect in CDMA systems. Antenna arrays have been shown to provide spatial diversity and cancel undesired signals. In this paper we consider the synergy of both multiuser detection and antenna arrays for the base station of a CDMA system. The receiver we proposed consists of the known multiuser decorrelator, which cancels multiple-access interferences followed by a beamformer for each user, which cancels the external interferences. This receiver adds an extra branch to the decorrelator. This additional branch, corresponding to a fictitious user with an unused code and zero power, allows to estimate the external interference signal subspace and compute a suitable beamforming weight-vector that cancels the external interferences. The receiver is also extended to the asynchronous case and all of this without any training signal or any a priori spatial information.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version