Iterative MMSE receivers for space-time trellis-coded CDMA systems in multipath fading channels

We explore code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems with multiple transmit and receive antennas combined with space-time trellis codes over a frequency-selective channel. The conventional noniterative multiuser minimum mean square error (NIMU-mmse) detector is generalized to accommodate multiple antennas and multiple paths and then extended to include the turbo principle in an iterative fashion, allowing interference regeneration and cancellation at the receiver. Iterative multiuser mmse (IMU-mmse) receivers employing chip- and symbol-level detectors are derived and their equivalence is demonstrated. Computer simulations show that the proposed iterative mmse equalizers completely remove the interference of the other users in a multiantenna environment; they provide a significant improvement over the NIMU-mmse detector and they effectively achieve the single-user performance, even in a fully loaded system. Two suboptimal iterative mmse detectors, which allow a computational complexity reduction of up to three orders of magnitude compared to the IMU-mmse and still outperform the NIMU-mmse detector, are introduced. The proposed iterative mmse equalizers are analyzed and supported by extensive computer simulations.