Performance of multicarrier-CDMA uplink with antenna arrays and multiuser detection

In this paper, an uplink MC-CDMA system incorporating multiuser detection and smart antennas has been considered. The performance of asynchronous as well as synchronous system is studied over a correlated Rayleigh multipath slow fading channel. A simplified array-processing algorithm suitable for slow fading situation is investigated to overcome the heavy computational complexity associated with Eigen solutions. The effect of variable data rate in the system performance is considered and effectiveness of antenna array to handle high data rate is discussed. A brief investigation on the system performance degradation due to correlated channel is also carried out. Based on the extensive simulation carried out, the performance of the asynchronous uplink system is found dramatically improved with antenna array and multiuser detection. Asynchronicity and channel correlation are found to affect the system performance significantly. The investigated simplified algorithm produces similar results as Eigen solutions in slow fading situation with much reduced complexity.