Successive multiuser detection and interference cancelation for contention based OFDMA ranging channel [transactions letters]

In this letter, we propose a successive multiuser detector (SMUD) for contention based OFDMA ranging channel compliant to the IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) standard. A ranging channel consists of a set of subcarriers in specific time slots shared by multiple users, so the multiple access interference (MAI) limits the performance of ranging detectors. Different from existing methods that treat the MAI as noise, the proposed SMUD successively detects the channel paths of active ranging signals and cancels their interference for further detection. This approach significantly suppresses the MAI and improves both user detection and parameter estimation performance.