Joint parameter estimation and demodulation of superimposed convolutional coded signals

A method of jointly estimating the parameters of a number of superimposed convolutional coded communication signals incident on an antenna array and demodulating these signals is presented. The method would allow simpler arrays to be designed due to the threshold extension obtained by this method. It also has the potential to increase the throughput of current multiple access channel systems, for example, satellite communications and digital mobile cellular phones, by using an antenna array. The concept is based on the use of sequence estimation combined jointly with parameter estimation in array processing problems. In the simulations it is shown that a significant improvement in the accuracy of the demodulated signals and in the estimation of the signals angle of arrivals is obtained compared to a deterministic maximum likelihood estimation method