Layered Steered Space–Time-Spreading-Aided Generalized MC DS-CDMA

We present a novel trifunctional multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) scheme that intrinsically amalgamates space-time spreading (STS) to achieve a diversity gain and a Vertical Bell Labs layered space-time (V-BLAST) scheme to attain a multiplexing gain in the context of generalized multicarrier direct-sequence code-division multiple access (MC DS-CDMA), as well as beamforming. Furthermore, the proposed system employs both time- and frequency-domain spreading to increase the number of users, which is also combined with a user-grouping technique to reduce the effects of multiuser interference. Further system performance improvements can be attained by serially concatenating our proposed scheme with an outer code that is amalgamated with a unity-rate code for the sake of improving the achievable decoding convergence behavior of the proposed system, which is evaluated with the aid of extrinsic information transfer charts. We also propose a novel logarithmic likelihood ratio (LLR) postprocessing technique to improve the iteratively detected system's performance. Explicitly, the proposed system can attain a second-order spatial diversity gain and a frequency diversity gain of order V, where V is the number of subcarriers. Additionally, the proposed system attains a beamforming gain and a multiplexing gain that is twice that of a single-input-single-output system. Furthermore, after I = 10 decoding iterations and employing an interleaver depth of D
_int
= 160 000 bits, a time-domain spreading factor of N
_e
= 4, and V = 4 subcarriers, the overloaded system supporting K = 8 users requires an E
_b
/N
₀
that is only about 0.45 dB higher than the single-user system.