Single-carrier Code Division Multiple Access Research Articles

Effect of Carrier Frequency Offset on Single-Carrier CDMA With Frequency-Domain Equalization

Single-carrier code-division multiple access (SC-CDMA) with frequency-domain equalization (FDE) has attracted renewed interest in CDMA due to its lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and higher frequency diversity than orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), increased robustness to asynchronous multipath and multiuser interference than RAKE-based CDMA, and a reduced need for timing and frequency coordination than time-division multiple access, frequency-division multiple access, and OFDMA. However, existing studies on SC-CDMA are mostly conducted based on an optimistic assumption of perfect carrier frequency estimation; hence, the carrier frequency offset (CFO) effect on the performance of SC-CDMA has not adequately been addressed and is not well understood. In this paper, the system performance of SC-CDMA with FDE is evaluated in terms of the average bit error rate (BER) and signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) obtained through an analytical approach for downlink transmission over a frequency-selective fading channel. The results show that CFO gives rise to three effects: 1) a net phase rotation; 2) fading-like signal power reduction; and 3) intercode interferences (ICIs) due to the loss of code orthogonality. How the CFO-induced BER degradation varies with the number of active users, the number of virtual subcarriers, and constellation size is also investigated. We further show that, in practice, to prevent the BER performance from dramatically deteriorating, the residual CFO after synchronization should be kept within 5% of the virtual subcarrier spacing, irrespective of the constellation size.

Space-Time Block Coding for Uplink Single-Carrier CDMA with Joint Detection in the Frequency Domain

Single-carrier code-division multiple access (SC-CDMA), also named cyclic-prefix CDMA in the literature, is a promising air interface for the uplink of the 4G cellular wireless communication systems. It enables the high capacity intrinsically offered by CDMA by making the equalization of the multipath channels and the mitigation of the resulting interference possible at a low complexity. This paper proposes a new air interface that combines SC-CDMA with space-time block coding (STBC) across multiple transmit antennas in order to make the link more robust. Contrary to existing air interfaces that perform the STBC at the chip level, making them only applicable to the downlink, the STBC is performed at the symbol level, making it also applicable to the uplink. In order to optimally detect the different antenna and user signals, a linear joint detector optimized according to the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion is designed. By exploiting the cyclic properties of the channel matrices, the complexity of the joint detector is significantly reduced. Furthermore, it is shown analytically that the inter-antenna interference is canceled out at the output of the first stage of the linear MMSE joint detector, consisting of a matched filter. By space-time coding the signal through two antennas at each transmit mobile terminal, a significant gain in signal-to-noise-ratio can be achieved. However, the spatial diversity gain of the proposed system is limited by the multiuser interference (MUI), that is increasing with the user load. Higher complexity non-linear receivers are needed to better compensate the MUI and still benefit from the spatial diversity at high user loads.

MMSE detection of multicarrier CDMA

Minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) detection of multicarrier code-division multiple-access (CDMA) signals is investigated. The theoretical performance of two different design strategies for MMSE detection are compared. In one case, the MMSE filters are designed separately for each carrier, while in the other case the optimization of the filters is done jointly. Naturally, the joint optimization produces a better receiver, but the difference in performance is shown to be substantial. The multicarrier CDMA performance is then compared to that of a single-carrier CDMA system on a frequency-selective fading channel. A mechanism is then developed to track the channel fading parameters for all the users' signals so that joint optimization of the receiver filters is possible in a time-varying channel. Simulation results show that the performance of this receiver is close to ideal theoretical results for moderate vehicle speeds. The performance begins to degrade when the normalized Doppler rate is higher than about 1%.

Comparison of multicarrier DS-CDMA broadcast systems in a multipath fading channel

The performance of a multicarrier direct sequence code-division multiple-access (CDMA) system employed in the forward link of a cellular system operating over a Rayleigh fading channel is analyzed and compared to the performance of both single-carrier CDMA and hybrid multicarrier CDMA/frequency division multiplexing systems. A RAKE receiver is provided for each subcarrier. We compare the performance of all three systems for various multipath intensity profiles. It is found that for a service requiring high quality and a small number of users, the multicarrier system is the best, but for a service requiring low quality and a large number of users, the hybrid system can support more users than the others. Also, for the case when nonorthogonal codes are used, the multiple-access interference in different resolvable paths are correlated. In that case, to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio in a correlated interference environment; maximal-ratio combining (MRC) is not optimal. However, we found that there is not much difference between the optimum combining and the conventional MRC.

Spectral overlay of multicarrier CDMA on existing CDMA mobile systems

A spectral overlay of a narrow-band code division multiple access (CDMA) system and a wide-band multicarrier CDMA system is considered as a means for existing CDMA mobile networks to evolve into a future CDMA network. The achievable joint capacity of the overlaid system is provided and compared with that of another network evolution strategy of spectrally overlaying wide-band single-carrier CDMA to the existing CDMA systems.

Multicarrier CDMA for cellular overlay systems

A code-division multiple access (CDMA) cellular overlay system is investigated, employing the idea of multicarrier CDMA, which has previously received significant attention as an alternative to traditional single-carrier CDMA. Overlay is pursued here as a means of long-term transition from narrowband cellular to CDMA cellular. A major result of this paper is the demonstration that the use of multicarrier CDMA in a fading channel is particularly beneficial to the narrowband system, as the CDMA users can reduce their transmitted powers as a result of diversity. Another significant conclusion is that the use of transmitter notching in the CDMA system in order to avoid active narrowband users outperforms a strategy in which a narrowband user is avoided by simply dropping the particular carrier which overlays it. Finally, results on the use of the minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) receiver in a fading channel are extended for use in the overlay scenario.

Performance of a Modified Multicarrier Direct Sequence CDMA System

In this paper, we present an improved multicarrier direct sequence (DS) code division multiple access (CDMA) scheme by modifying the system originally proposed by Kondo and Milstein [13]. In this modified system, different spreading sequences multiplied by a data sequence modulate different carriers. This is to prevent the multiple access capability from reducing when the fading characteristics of different carrier frequencies are highly correlated. We have derived a formula which determines the mean values of the relative received signal strength in a single carrier DS CDMA rake system and in a multicarrier DS-CDMA system. We present results on the comparison of the bit error rate (BER) performance of the two systems including the effect of correlation between fading characteristics of different frequencies under various multipath fading conditions. The results indicate that with 50 users the modified multicarrier DS CDMA system can achieve an uncoded irreducible BER of 1.7 × 10−−3 with an average received signal-to-noise ratio per bit of 10 dB, which is better than 3.0 × 10−−3 achieved by the single carrier DS CDMA rake system, and also show that if multicarrier CDMA system is used with respect to single carrier CDMA system, the SNR gain is up to 4.5 dB for the uncode BER of 10−−3 being achieved.