A covariance shaping framework for linear multiuser detection

A new class of linear multiuser receivers, referred to as the covariance shaping multiuser (CSMU) receiver, is proposed, for suppression of interference in multiuser wireless communication systems. This class of receivers is based on the recently proposed covariance shaping least-squares estimator, and is designed to minimize the total variance of the weighted error between the receiver output and the observed signal, subject to the constraint that the covariance of the noise component in the receiver output is proportional to a given covariance matrix, so that we control the dynamic range and spectral shape of the output noise. Some of the well-known linear multiuser receivers are shown to be special cases of the CSMU receiver. This allows us to interpret these receivers as the receivers that minimize the total error variance in the observations, among all linear receivers with the same output noise covariance, and to analyze their performance in a unified way. We derive exact and approximate expressions for the probability of bit error, as well as the asymptotic signal-to-interference+noise ratio in the large system limit. We also characterize the spectral efficiency versus energy-per-information bit of the CSMU receiver in the wideband regime. Finally, we consider a special case of the CSMU receiver, equivalent to a mismatched minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) receiver, in which the channel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is not known precisely. Using our general performance analysis results, we characterize the performance of the mismatched MMSE receiver. We then treat the case in which the SNR is known to lie in a given uncertainty range, and develop a robust mismatched MMSE receiver whose performance is very close to that of the MMSE receiver over the entire uncertainty range.