A Joint Coded Two-Step Multiuser Detection Scheme for MIMO OFDM System

Multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) communication is an effective scheme to improve wireless communication performance of multiuser applications. However, reliable communication in multiuser systems is affected by the presence of both multi-access interference (MAI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI) in multi-path channels. In this paper, we therefore investigate a transceiver design for a wideband multiuser-MiMO communication system, where the co-channel users are equipped with multiple transmit and multiple receive antennas. In particular, we propose a two-step interference cancellation scheme with an error correction coding technique for the receiver of a multiuser uplink system. The scheme employs orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation and space-time block codes (STBC). The receiver performs as a soft output multiuser detector based on minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) interference suppression at the first stage, and then, MAI cancellation is implemented with a bank of single-user channel decoders. The paper also includes computer simulations which help to improve the understanding of specific issues involved in the design of multiuser STBC-OFDM systems, and confirm the utility of the proposed approach.