Impact of partial equalization on the downlink performance of multi-carrier CDMA systems

In this paper we analytically evaluate the downlink performance of multi-carrier code division multiple access systems adopting a partial equalization technique. This technique, that depends on a parameter which can be adapted to different conditions such as the number of sub-carriers, the number of active users and the mean signal-to-noise ratio, is proposed and analytically studied. We derive the performance of this system and the value of the equalization parameter that maximizes the performance. The proposed technique is shown to have the same complexity of the well known maximal ratio combining, equal gain combining and orthogonal restoring combining techniques, with significative performance improvement.