Iterative receivers for multiuser space-time coding systems

In this paper, by drawing analogies between a synchronous CDMA system and an STC multiuser system, we study the applications of some multiuser detection methods to STC multiuser systems. Specifically, we show that the so-called “turbo multiuser detection” technique, which performs soft interference cancellation and decoding iteratively, can be applied to STC multiuser systems in Rayleigh flat-fading channels. An iterative multiuser receiver are developed for both the space-time block coding (STBC) system and the space-time trellis coding (STCC) system. During iterations, extrinsic information computed and exchanged between a soft multiuser demodulator and a bank of MAP decoders, to achieve successively refined estimates of the users´ signals. Computer simulations demonstrate that the proposed iterative receiver techniques provide significant performance improvement over conventional non-iterative methods in both single-user and multiuser STC systems. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed iterative multiuser receiver approaches that of the iterative single-user receiver in both STBC and STTC systems