Successive interference cancelation for a CDMA system with diversity reception in non‐Gaussian noise

A large class of physical phenomenon observed in practical wireless systems exhibits non‐Gaussian behavior. The performance of many multiuser detectors can degrade substantially in the presence of such impulsive ambient noise. In this paper, multiuser detection of space coded MIMO and code division multiple access (CDMA) signals under impulsive noise with diversity reception are investigated. We analyze and derive the probability of bit error (P_b) performance of a successive interference cancelation (SIC) system under impulsive noise and maximal ratio combining. We use Middleton's class A model for the noise distribution. Furthermore, we employ post detection SIC as the robust multiuser detection technique for combating the impulsive noise at specific noise parameters in a CDMA setting. The performance of the system under power imbalance is also shown. Novel analytical derivations for both combining techniques are presented, and simulations were performed, which confirm the theoretical results. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.