Multistage decision-directed channel estimation scheme for DS-CDMA system with M-ary orthogonal signaling

A multistage decision-directed channel estimation scheme is proposed for a coherent direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) system with M-ary orthogonal signaling. The receiver with a multistage decision-directed channel estimator makes alternate use of symbol detection and channel estimation in an iterative manner, resulting in a multistage structure where each stage consists of an estimator and a detector. The estimator obtains the estimates of the channel by using the decisions from the detector in the previous stage, and the detector uses these estimates for coherent detection of the transmitted symbols. Modifications to the process of generating the channel estimates and the decision variables are made to mitigate the error propagation in successive stages. It is shown that the performance of the proposed estimation scheme is better than the conventional scheme, especially for channels with high diversity order. The gain is mostly achieved by two stages for channels with low diversity order and by five stages for channels with high diversity order. The proposed scheme can be used to increase the capacity of DS-CDMA systems currently operating in such environments.