Performance comparison of a DS/CDMA system using a successive interference cancellation (IC) scheme and a parallel IC scheme under fading

Overcoming near/far effects and fading is imperative for satisfactory performance of DS/CDMA systems. Commercial digital cellular systems based on CDMA use stringent power control to combat near/far effects and fading. Another approach which has a fundamental potential in not only eliminating near/far problems, but also in significantly raising capacity, is multiuser detectors and interference cancellers. The authors compare the performance of a serial (successive) interference cancellation (IC) scheme and a parallel IC scheme for a coherent BPSK, DS/CDMA system under flat Rayleigh fading channels. Though the performance of the parallel IC scheme was found to be superior under equal received powers, the successive IC scheme outperformed it for a realistic fading environment. Both outperformed the conventional detector in both cases