Joint decorrelating multiuser detection and channel estimation in asynchronous CDMA mobile communications channels

The asymptotic efficiencies of two decorrelators, path-by-path and channel-matched decorrelators, are analyzed in fading multipath propagation environments, and based upon the analytical results, a new joint multiuser detection and channel estimation scheme is proposed for asynchronous code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile communications channels. In the path-by-path decorrelator, each of the received signals corresponding to one of the multiple propagation paths is regarded as an independent interference source. On the contrary, in the channel-matched decorrelator, each composite signal transmitted from an identical user is regarded as a response of the multipath channel to the corresponding user´s spreading sequence. The asymptotic efficiency of the path-by-path decorrelator is shown to drop rapidly as the number of simultaneous users increases. It is shown that the asymptotic efficiency can be made independent of the number of the propagation paths by the channel-matched decorrelator at the expense of requiring knowledge about the fading complex envelopes of all the propagation paths. The proposed joint multiuser detection and channel estimation scheme uses both path-by-path and channel-matched decorrelators. The path-by-path decorrelator is used for providing the channel estimator with the (noisy) channel information path-by-path, and decisions are made on the output of the channel-matched decorrelator. The decision results are fed back to the channel estimator, and used as the reference signals. The received complex envelope of each of the propagation paths is estimated in the channel estimator. Results of a series of exhaustive computer simulations are presented in order to demonstrate the overall performance of the proposed scheme, both in non-fading and fading multipath propagation environments