Generalized Superposition Modulation and Iterative Demodulation: A Capacity Investigation

Abstract

Modulation with correlated signal waveforms is considered. Such correlation arises naturally in a number of modern communications systems and channels, for example, in code‐division multiple‐access (CDMA) and multiple‐antenna systems. Data entering the channel in parallel streams either naturally or via inverse multiplexing is transmitted redundantly by adding additional signal waveforms populating the same original time‐frequency space, thus not requiring additional bandwidth or power. The transmitted data is spread over a frame of N signaling intervals by random permutations. The receiver combines symbol likelihood values, calculates estimated signals and iteratively cancels mutual interference. For a random choice of the signal waveforms, it is shown that the capacity of the expanded waveform set is nondecreasing and achieves the capacity of the Gaussian multiple access channel as its upper limit when the number of waveforms becomes large. Furthermore, it is proven that the iterative demodulator proposed here can achieve a fraction of 0.995 or better of the channel capacity irrespective of the number of transmitted data streams. It is also shown that the complexity of this iterative demodulator grows only linearly with the number of data streams.