Joint ML & MMSE-SIC detection for multi cell network environment

In this paper, we address the issue of the joint detection schemes for uplink cellular system when base station cooperation is possible for multi-cell users in multi-cell scenario. The ML, MMSE and MMSE based SIC detection are analyzed and evaluated. ML attains the optimal performance but the complexity increases exponentially. MMSE is simple but has poor detection performance and SIC has better performance but it has large complexity and the potential of the error propagation. We propose a new ML and MMSE-SIC detection scheme, which combines the partial ML decoding and MMSE based SIC combined detection in order to improve the uncoded BER performance and also decrease the decoding complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme attains the maximum 2 dB reduction of required SNR value to achieve the same BER performance and a similar or a little bit reduced level of decoder complexity over the MMSE based SIC scheme. The proposed scheme can be applied to the MIMO detection for single user and can be extended to other types of multi-user and multi-antenna based BS Cooperation.