A flexible receiver for CDMA multiuser communications

Code division multiple access (CDMA) capacity is limited by interference amongst users. The effect of this interference on receiver outputs depends on the users´ signatures and the actual detector used in the receiver. A matched filter receiver is particularly sensitive to interference, whereas an optimum multiuser receiver is less sensitive but infeasible due to its exponential complexity. We propose a receiver structure that trades detection performance for reduced complexity. It can interpolate between the performances and complexities of these two receivers. Our detector uses a tree structure, and some of its special cases are the decision feedback detector, the decorrelating detector, and the optimal linear detector. We show that at equal complexity levels, a particular implementation of our detector outperforms these detectors. We also show that our approach can be used with a minimum-mean-square-error design criterion and coded CDMA transmission