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