Bitwise Early Termination of Multiuser Detection for IDMA Systems

This letter presents an early termination scheme for iterative multiuser detection in interleave division multiple access (IDMA) systems. Instead of handling an entire frame as a whole, each bit in the frame is separately considered. If further iterations are found to be dispensable in determining a bit, the estimate of the bit is immediately finalized, and all the calculations associated with the bit are bypassed afterward, diminishing the computational complexity. To confirm the dispensability, all log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) associated with a bit are examined. Once their magnitudes exceed a threshold, their statistical measures are unlikely to change even after a few more iterations, implying that further iterations are unnecessary. As a countermeasure for infrequent behaviors deviating from such an expectation, the signs of the LLRs in two consecutive iterations are compared. If they all match, the bitwise procedure is terminated. For the remaining bits not fulfilling the criterion, the procedure continues as usual. As a result, in the realm of practical signal-to-noise ratios, a significant number of iterations and operations can be discarded while sustaining the near-optimal error rate.