List-Based Group-Wise Symbol Detection for Multiple Signal Communications

Co-channel interference (CCI) occurs in a wireless receiver when multiple signals are present. The receiver experiences excessive CCI under overload which occurs when there are more signals than receive antennas. This makes separation and estimation of the transmitted data signals difficult. We develop a novel reduced-complexity receiver structure for the separation and symbol detection of multiple co-channel signals in frequency-flat Rayleigh fading channels. Moreover, we show that list-based group-wise processing can achieve better performance at low and moderate signal-to-noise ratios than existing group-wise soft information processing schemes. The receiver is equipped with multiple antennas and developed to work under overload. Its structure consists of a linear preprocessor followed by a nonlinear reduced-complexity symbol detector. The proposed list group-search detection (LGSD) algorithm relies on list feedback and reduces complexity by iteratively searching over groups of transmitted symbols. It outputs a list of likely data symbols which is well suited to further processing using soft input error control decoders. Simulation shows that LGSD can achieve near optimum joint maximum likelihood performance under overload at significantly lower complexity.