A Multiple Access Scheme for the Uplink of MIMO Systems

In order to efficiently use the common channel resources in multi-user multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) systems, an independent component based multiple access (ICMA) scheme is introduced. In ICMA, the signals generated by different users are distinguished only from their independence, where neither non-interfering subchannels nor orthogonality constraints are needed. The scheme is based on independent component analysis (ICA) algorithm, which is a fundamental technique for blind source separation. The performance of the proposed receiver is compared with zero forcing (ZF) receiver and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) receiver. Simulation results show that ICMA receiver performs better than ZF receiver, and worse than MMSE receiver. However, in ICMA, there is no need of synchronization and channal estimation, which is required in ZF and MMSE. The efficiencies of the scheme are observed.