Optimal reception, performance bound, and cutoff rate analysis of references-assisted coherent CDMA communications with applications

Coherent spread-spectrum communications with transmitted reference-based, also called pilot-based, channel estimation is considered for code-division multiple-access (CDMA) communications over fading channels. Both noncontiguous time-division multiplexed reference symbol-based and continuous code-division multiplexed channel-based schemes are described. Assuming mean square error or optimal robust channel estimation, we derive the optimal receiver structure with a maximum-likelihood convolutional decoder. In addition, the Bhattacharyya bound and the cutoff rate of the reference-assisted coherent communications are derived. These analytical results are used for evaluating system performance and for selecting parameters such as coding rate and the data to reference power ratio to optimize system performance. Simulation results are given showing that the reverse link performance in a CDMA system can be significantly improved by using the reference-assisted coherent communication instead of noncoherent reception of orthogonally coded signal.