A Soft-Input Soft-Output Decorrelating Block Decision-Feedback MultiuserDetector for Turbo-Coded DS-CDMA Systems

Abstract

Previously, a decorrelating decision-feedback multiuser detector for direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems normally produces only hard-decision outputs of users' data. In turbo-coded DS-CDMA systems, such a multiuser detector does not match well with the soft-input soft-output nature of a turbo-decoding algorithm, thereby resulting in some extent of performance loss. In this paper, a soft-input soft-output decorrelating block decision-feedback multiuser detector is proposed to perform joint multiuser detection and turbo decoding in an iterative manner. This multiuser detector partitions the received users' data into a number of blocks appropriately and then detects the users' data on a block-by-block basis, where the soft-decision outputs are generated based on the maximum a posteriori criterion and the decision outputs of a stronger block (with a higher energy) are fed back for use in making decisions of those weaker ones. Computer simulation results show that the proposed iterative multiuser detector with turbo decoding significantly improves the bit error rate performance of a DS-CDMA receiver.