Adaptive TORC detection for MC-CDMA wireless systems

Multi carrier code-division multiple access (MC-CDMA) is considered for beyond third generation wireless systems for its effectiveness in the presence of both multipath fading and interference. This paper analyzes MC-CDMA systems adopting an adaptive detection technique based on threshold orthogonality restoring combining (TORC). The mathematical framework here developed allows the evaluation of both the bit error probability and the bit error outage in downlink with perfect and imperfect channel state information and the derivation of the TORC threshold that optimizes the performance. The optimal threshold is analytically derived as a function of the number of subcarriers, the number of active users, and the mean signal-to-noise ratio. This enables an adaptive variation of the threshold following slow processes fluctuations. Numerical results show very good performance of TORC with optimal threshold comparing with others combining techniques with perfect and imperfect channel estimation. Results are shown both in uncorrelated Rayleigh fading as well as in time and frequency correlated fading channels.