Joint iterative decoding of serially concatenated error control coded CDMA

Joint iterative decoding of multiple forward error control (FEC) encoded data streams is studied for linear multiple access channels, such as code-division multiple access (CDMA). It is shown that such systems can be viewed as serially concatenated coding systems, and that iterative soft-decision decoding can be performed successfully To improve power efficiency, powerful FEC codes are used. These FEC codes are themselves serially concatenated. The overall transmission system can be viewed as the concatenation of two error control codes with the linear multiple access channel, and soft-decision decoders are used at each stage. A variance transfer function approach applied to the analysis of this system captures the role of the component decoders in an overall iterative decoding system. We show that this approach forms a methodology to study the effects of the component codes as well as that of the iteration schedule. Analysis and simulation examples are presented for transmission systems that operate close to the Shannon limit and illustrate the accuracy of the analysis.