Iterative successive interference cancellation for multi-user DS/CDMA detectors in multipath channels

This paper deals with uplink Direct-Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) transmissions over mobile radio channels. A new interference cancellation scheme for multiuser detection, calledSIC/RAKE, is presented. It is based on a modified multistage Successive Interference Cancellation (sic) structure that enables efficient detection in multipath propagation environments, thanks to a single userRAKE receiver incorporated in each unit of thesic structure. Furthermore, a modified version of thesic structure, calledSIC/MMSE, that ensures convergence to theMMSE detector rather than to the decorrelating detector has been suggested. The convergence of theSIC/RAKE andSIC/MMSE methods is proved. Simulation results for the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) have been carried out for flat fading Rayleigh multipath channels, showing that the proposed detector is resistant to the near-far effect and that low performance loss is obtained compared to the single-user bound.