Multistage linear receivers for DS-CDMA systems

A new family of multistage low-complexity linear receivers for direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) communications is introduced. The objective of the proposed design is to mitigate the effect of multiple access interference (MAI), the most significant limiting factor of user capacity in the conventional DS-CDMA channel. The receivers presented here employ joint detection of multiple users and therefore require knowledge of all the signature codes and their timing. In addition, for a multipath environment, reliable estimates of the received powers and phases are assumed available for maximal ratio RAKE combining. Each stage of the underlying design recreates the overall modulation, noiseless channel, and demodulation process. The outputs of these stages are then linearly combined. The combining weights can be chosen to implement different linear detectors, including the decorrelating and minimum mean square error (MMSE) detectors. In this paper, we focus on implementing the MMSE detector. Simulation results illustrate that significant performance gains can be achieved in both synchronous and asynchronous systems.This work was presented in part at IEEE Communication Theory Workshop, April 23–26, 1995, and at IEEE MILCOM '95, November 5–8, 1995.This work was submitted in partial fulfillment of Ph.D. requirements at The City University of New York.