Joint channel estimation and multiuser detection for multipath fading channels in DS-CDMA

The problem of joint blind channel estimation and multiple access interference (MAI) suppression for an asynchronous code-division multiple-access (CDMA) system is studied. A low-complexity sliding-window scheme based on the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is developed for joint blind maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) multi-user detection (MUD) and stochastic maximum likelihood (ML) channel estimation in a dispersive fading channel. With multi-stage soft interference cancellation, MAI can be efficiently suppressed. Together with an initial value prediction method for algorithm initialization at each window, the proposed scheme can track fading channels on the fly with no phase ambiguities even when channel gains are close to zero.