Trellis-coded cochannel interference canceller for microcellular radio

Cochannel interference is a major impairment that limits the capacity of microcellular radio systems. This paper proposes a trellis-coded cochannel interference canceller, which uses trellis-coded modulation with maximum likelihood sequence estimation of both the desired signal and cochannel interference. This technique permits operation even when the signal-to-interference ratio is 0 dB. Computer simulation results show that this technique significantly reduces the bit-error rate in microcellular systems with Nakagami-Rice fading, particularly when the average signal-to-interference ratio is 0 dB. However, the technique requires: (1) synchronization of the interference and the desired signal and (2) higher computational complexity than standard techniques.