Multiple-access interference suppression for MC-CDMA by frequency-domain oversampling

A technique for interference suppression in multicarrier code-division multiple-access (MC-CDMA) systems is proposed which exploits the structural differences in signals that arrive at the receiver with Doppler shifts or carrier offsets. Oversampling the received signal in the frequency domain and properly combining the samples provides the interference suppression. Frequency-domain oversampling is accomplished by using a time extension of the conventional MC-CDMA signal or unconsumed portions of the cyclic prefix. Furthermore, a receiver structure is introduced that despreads and combines groups of samples so that a linear minimum mean-squared error solution for combining the groups is easily found. This combining scheme increases the signal-to-interference ratio experienced by the desired user in the MC-CDMA system. In addition, the receiver performs well in severe near-far scenarios when there is sufficient frequency separation between the signals of the desired user and an interferer. Numerical results show that the proposed receiver significantly outperforms the conventional MC-CDMA receiver in many channel realizations.