Equalizers for multi-user detection in code division multiple access mobile radio systems

In code division multiple access (CDMA) systems transmitting over time-varying multipath channels, both intersymbol interference (ISI) and multiple access interference (MAI) arise. The conventional suboptimum receiver consisting of a bank of matched filters is often inefficient because interference is treated as noise. The optimum multi-user detector is too complex to be implemented at present. Four suboptimum detection techniques based on zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalization with and without decision feedback (DF) are presented and compared. They combat both ISI and MAI. The computational complexity of all four equalizers is essentially the same and they are independent of the size of the data symbol alphabet. It is shown that all four equalizers considerably outperform the conventional receiver. The MMSE equalizers are superior to the corresponding ZF equalizers. Furthermore, the equalizers with DF perform better than the corresponding equalizers without DF. An algorithm termed channel sorting is introduced to reduce the impairing effect of error propagation on the equalizers with DF