A novel CDMA multiuser interference cancellation receiver with reference symbol aided estimation of channel parameters

A novel multistage successive interference cancellation scheme is proposed which operates on the reverse code-division multiple-access (CDMA) link using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation, coherent detection and reference symbols to obtain channel estimates. The results of a single cell multiuser investigation demonstrate increased traffic capacity. However, this increase is initially very moderate due to corruption of the channel estimates by interference from symbols not yet demodulated and cancelled. A modification in the transmitted signal structure addressing this problem is proposed. The results of a single cell analysis of the modified cancellation scheme demonstrate that the system's traffic capacity reaches approximately 80% of that of a multistage successive interference cancelling receiver operating with the perfect knowledge of channel parameters. A subsequent multicell investigation shows that for a hexagonal cell geometry with a path loss exponent of four and without any forward error correction (FEC) coding or cell sectorization, the system capacity compares very favorably with that of the IS-95 system, which employs powerful error control coding. Capacities with other path loss exponents and cell geometries are also investigated. The results show a substantial traffic capacity increase over that of a comparable receiver without interference cancellation.