Transmitter-based multiuser interference rejection for the down-link of a wireless CDMA system in a multipath environment

Abstract

In wireless code division multiple access (CDMA) communications systems, there has been interest in processing the transmitted down-link signal in order to shift signal processing to the transmitter where power and computational resources are plentiful, thus simplifying receiver operation and reducing the power it requires. Multiuser interference (MUI) and multipath effects observed by the receiver are anticipated and suppressed at the transmitter; channel equalization and multiuser detection are therefore not required. This paper introduces two methods that are able to combat both degradations, yet allow the receiver to remain as simple as a single user receiver for a perfect channel. For mild multipath channels, the performance of the algorithms is excellent, within a few decibels of the single user ideal channel case, at the cost of additional computation at the base station at which complete knowledge of the channels and the receiver codewords is required. One method, the decorrelating prefilter, is most flexible and applicable to existing systems yet less powerful than other previously published methods. The second, the jointly optimized sequences algorithm, has a performance on average superior to published methods. In addition to theoretical analysis and simulation of the algorithms' potential, these algorithms have also been implemented and tested on a software radio testbed and experimental data are shown. The jointly optimized sequences performed particularly well even in severe multipath and multiuser interference environments.