www.ietdl.

org

Published in IET Communications

Received on 23rd August 2006
Revised on 16th September 2007
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014

ISSN 1751-8628

Blind channel estimation for multiple input

multiple output uplink guard-band assisted
code division multiple access systems with
layered space frequency equalisation
S. Punnoose X. Zhu A.K. Nandi
Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, The University of Liverpool, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L69 3GJ, UK
E-mail: xuzhu@liv.ac.uk

Abstract: Single carrier (SC) code division multiple access (CDMA) with block transmission has been shown to be
more effective while utilising a low-complexity equaliser to combat frequency-selective fading channels, when
compared with conventional direct sequence CDMA technology. It also has lower peak-to-average power ratio
and lower frequency sensitivity compared with multicarrier CDMA. The authors propose two blind channel
estimation methods for uplink multiple input multiple output SC-CDMA systems with block transmisssion-one
is the subspace-based method and the other is the so-called autocorrelation contribution method (ACM).
Both the methods provide close performance to the case with perfect channel knowledge at high signal-to-
noise ratio (SNR) without any training data required. It is shown that ACM yields a better performance than
the subspace method at a lower SNR, and a similar performance at a high SNR, with the advantages of
avoiding rank determination and noise power estimation as in the subspace method. In addition, the authors
integrate layered space frequency equalisation with blind channel estimation, which provides improved
performance over the conventional linear equalisation, by employing successive interference cancellation.

1 Introduction
Code division multiple access (CDMA) [1] is an attractive
broadband technique, which features anti-jamming
capability, robustness to multipath interference,
interference rejection and data privacy and so on. The
most popular forms of CDMA include direct sequence
(DS)-CDMA and frequency hopped CDMA [1]. In
frequency-selective channels, time-domain-based Rake
receivers [2], which utilise the matched filter technique
to equalise, are severely affected by inter-finger
interference, self-interference as well as multiple access
interference (MAI), and thus results in poor performance.
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) [3]
is another attractive broadband technique, which simplifies a
frequency-selective fading channel into parallel flat fading
channels. Guard bands (GB), adding redundancy in the
form of a cyclic prefix (CP) [4] or zero padding (ZP) [5]
are used to eliminate inter-block interference (IBI).
Multicarrier (MC)-CDMA [6] combines the advantages
of CDMA and OFDM [4]. Yee et al. [7] as well as Chouly
et al. [8] were among others who investigated the effects of
spreading coupled with MC schemes and the advantages
availed as a result of this combination. However, MC-
CDMA schemes have a few drawbacks, namely the high
peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and the high
sensitivity to carrier-frequency offset.
This has resulted in a renewed interest in single carrier
(SC) CDMA block transmissions with frequency domain
equalisation (FDE) [9], the key feature of which is that it
utilises the block structure along with GB insertion in
the form of CP [10] or ZP as in MC-CDMA. Use of
linear equalisers for multiple input multiple output

& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008 IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493 – 503/ 493
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
www.ietdl.org
(MIMO) systems is further complicated by the need for a
large number of taps [2, 11]. To alleviate the high
complexity needs, FDE-based techniques have been
proposed by Garg and Adachi [12], Burg et al. [11] for
MIMO-CDMA [13, 14] schemes, which provide not
only better performance but also lower complexity. The
absence of large amplitude gains and the PAPR as well as
synchronisation problems of MC-CDMA schemes make
SC-CDMA with FDE [9] an attractive alternative for
next-generation wireless communications.
MIMO systems have been shown to be effective in
enhancing capacity without any additional power or
bandwidth requirements. It requires a rich scattering
environment as is the case in most wireless
transmission channels. The genesis of MIMO was
proposed by Jack Winters [15]. Other pioneering
works include those of Foschini, who introduced the
Bell Labs Layered Space Time (BLAST) algorithms
[16], and Foschini and Gans [17] who computed the
capacity that can be achieved with MIMO and so on.
Layered space frequency equalisation (LSFE) [18],
which provides performance improvement over
conventional linear algorithms, utilises FDE along with
successive interference cancellation to detect the
transmitted signals in stages. A low-complexity LSFE
scheme was also proposed for downlink MIMO-DS-
CDMA systems [19], utilising an overlap-cut method
to approximate guard-band insertion. However, LSFE
has not been used for the uplink SC-CDMA with
block transmission, especially in a MIMO setup.
Conventional channel estimation schemes are based
on training symbols [9]. This however leads to
significant bandwith loss. Therefore blind channel
estimation schemes are desirable. Blind signal
separation [20] and other higher-order statistic [21]
approaches are difficult to apply in CDMA-based
systems, because of the guassian nature of the signal as
a result of the addition of the user signals on all
carriers. The second-order statistics (SOS)-based
methods [22, 23] however are more suitable and the
subspace approach is a key SOS-based method that has
been used for DS-CDMA-based systems. Blind
channel estimation techniques for DS-CDMA schemes
based on the subspace idea [22, 23] have been
proposed in the downlink channel case [24, 25],
whereas Xu [26] dealt with subspace approximation
method. A synchronous DS-CDMA setup was
examined in [24], whereas [25] an asynchronous DS-
CDMA downlink scenario was investigated. However,
the subspace-based method has not been used in
MIMO SC-CDMA uplink case so far. Another SOS-
based approach is the autocorrelation contribution
method (ACM)-based blind channel estimation method
[27]. It avoids the need for an initial singular value
decomposition (SVD) stage for determination of
494 / IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493– 503
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014
Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
noise-subspace and also is not sensitive to rank of the
noise-subspace. It was used for DS-CDMA system in
[27]. The key advantages of this approach are that it is
more robust at lower SNR as a result of the use of
the whole correlation matrix instead of the noise-
subspace as in subspace-based approach. However, the
ACM has not been used in MIMO SC-CDMA uplink
setup so far either. The CDMA systems considered in
[25– 28] all involved DS-CDMA with no guard-band
and utilised the inter-symbol interference (ISI)-affected
signal for channel estimation. The MIMO uplink SC-
CDMA block transmission with CP considered here
utilises the CP guard-band to provide ISI immunity as
well as to help in the blind channel estimation stage
by using the redundant nature of the CP guard-band.
In this paper we propose the application of two blind
channel estimation methods namely the subspace
approach and the ACM for MIMO SC-CDMA systems
with block transmission. Our work is different in a
way that we investigate MIMO Uplink SC-CDMA
Uplink system with block transmission. We also
integrate LSFE along with blind channel estimation to
yield performance improvements compared with the
conventional minimum mean square error (MMSE)
scheme. The ACM proposed in [27] is applied here to
the uplink MIMO SC-CDMA system with block
transmission, which eliminates the need for the
determination of rank criterion as in subspace-based
approach. Both the blind channel methods that are
applied utilise the GB structure of the transmitted
signal to enable blind channel estimation, whereas in
DS-CDMA systems, the same methods involve using
the ISI-corrupted signal. Thus the guard band in our
system serves the dual purpose of eliminating ISI and
assisting in blind channel estimation. This setup also
differs from the MIMO MC-CDMA uplink case [29],
where the diagonal structure of the channel matrix
obtained after guard-band suppression and FFT
processing aids in blind channel estimation. As the
diagonal structure of the channel matrix is lost in SC-
CDMA systems because of the shifting of the IFFT
stage from the transmitter side to the receiver side,
the guard-band intact received signal is used for blind
channel estimation here by making use of the Toeplitz
matrix property.
Simulation results show that both the methods
provide close performance to the case with perfect
channel knowledge at high SNR. There is the added
advantage of eliminating the need for rank estimation
when using the ACM method. We also show the
effect of receiving diversity on performance of LSFE.
Also plots are shown that illustrate the stable nature
of SC-CDMA with FDE to various channel lengths.
The effect of varying loads, that is different
numbers of users on the system performance, is also
highlighted.
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008

Section 2 describes the SC-CDMA setup with Section
3 detailing the blind channel estimation methods used.
Section 4 describes the two main equaliser schemes
considered namely the MMSE equaliser and the LSFE
scheme. The simulation results showing the improved
performance of LSFE as against the linear MMSE
equaliser are illustrated in Section 5, whereas Section
6 concludes the paper.
The following notations are used throughout the paper.
Matrices and vectors are represented by boldface
uppercase and lowercase respectively, [.]T, [.]H denote
the transpose and conjugate transpose and I represents
the N
N identity matrix.
2 SC-CDMA
2.1 System model
The system model for a MIMO SC-CDMA [10, 13 – 14]
uplink system is shown in Fig. 1. Here the system
employs just a block transmission scheme with a GB
insertion stage, which is the CP system. The SC-
CDMA with CP scenario [9] is presented here. The
use of multiple antennas at the receiver (base station)
is feasible and practical as against the mobile user,
where power and complexity issues become
paramount. At the base-station (receiver) end, receive
diversity can be utilised by introducing multiple antennas.
Some assumptions made in the model described are
as follows:
1. Nt and Nr are the number of transmit and receive
antennas, respectively, and Nt is equal to number of
users. Also a synchronous system model is assumed.
2. L is the channel order which is assumed to be known
at receiver as is the noise power.
3. The signals are assumed to be white with zero-mean
and unit variance.
4. The spreading codes used are Walsh-Hadamard
codes of size N where N is the number of subcarriers.
Here the spreading gain is chosen to be equal to the
number of subcarriers.
Figure 1 SC-CDMA uplink transmitter
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008
Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
www.ietdl.org
5. Binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation is used
for each user.
Each user’s signal is first spread using the
corresponding spreading code. The spread signals after
blocking are then transferred to GB insertion stage,
where CP is appended to provide immunity against ISI.
As illustrated in Fig. 1, the user-spreaded signal is
grouped into blocks of size N. These size N blocks are
then passed through the CP insertion stage. The CP-
inserted signal of size P, where P ¼ N þ Lcp, is then
transmitted through the multipath fading MIMO channel
under the assumption that Lcp  L that is the CP is at
least as long as the channel order represented by L [30].
At the receiver end as illustrated in Fig. 2, the
received signal has its guard-band removed before
being passed onto FFT stage. After FFT, the FDE
stage equalises the signal. The equalised signal is
converted back to time domain via application of IFFT
before hard decision device is used to obtain the
estimates of the transmitted symbols.
After passing through the GB removal and FFT stages
[9], the frequency domain model of the received signal
at frequency bin n can be written as
X
Nt
xj [n] ¼ h~ j,i [n]ci [n]si [n] þ vj [n] (1)
i¼1
where h~ j,i [n] is the Fourier transform coefficient of the
channel matrix between transmit antenna i and receive
antenna j on sub-carrier n. ci [n] represents the nth
value of the spreading code for user i, whereas si [n] is
the data bit transmitted from transmit antenna i on
subcarrier n and v j [n] denotes the noise at the jth
receive antenna on subcarrier n. The above equation
over all subcarriers can be expressed as shown below
with H~ j,i denoting the N point FFT of the circulant
channel between jth receive and ith receive antenna,
Figure 2 SC-CDMA uplink receiver
IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493 – 503/ 495
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014
www.ietdl.org

where the (k, l )th entry of the circulant matrix is given Toeplitz nature of the model to obtain the subspace
by hj,i ((k  l)modN). cost function as will be explained below.
Let X j ¼ [xTj [1] . . . xTj [N]]T represent the received Making use of the Toeplitz matrix property [31], we
signal at antenna j, and ci ¼ [ci [1] . . . ci [N]]T denotes the can exchange the channel and code vectors to obtain the
spreading code vector of user i , a column vector of size equivalent user-transmitted signal denoted by gi as
N
1 and si ¼ [si [1]si [2] . . . si [N]] represent the data
transmitted by user i. V j ¼ [vTj [1] . . . v Tj [N]]T is the gi ¼ C tj,i hj,i si (6)
noise at the jth receive antenna. Thus, we obtain
where hj,i denotes the channel impulse response
X
Nt between receive antenna j and user i. Ctj,i , the
Xj ¼ ~ j,i ci si þ V j
H (2) Toeplitz spreading code matrix for user i, of size
i¼1 P
L is expressed as
2 3
Allowing Di ¼ ci si denote the N
N matrix of user i’s bi1 0 0 . . . 0
spread signal, (2) can be written as 6 bi2 bi1 0 07
6 7
6 : : bi1 07
X
Nt 6 7
6 7
Xj ¼ ~ j,i Di þ V j
H (3) C tj,i ¼ 6 biN . . . . . . bi1 7 (7)
6 bi1 0 . . . 0 7
i¼1 6 7
6 . . 7
4 .. bi1 .. 05
The equivalent matrix vector form of the received signal
model is of the form as expressed in (4) with X biL . . . . . . bi1
denoting the net received signal over all received
antenna given by X ¼ [X T1 X T2 . . . X TNr ]T where bin (n ¼ 1, 2, . . . , N) is the nth bit of the time
domain spreading code sequence for user i.
X
Nt
X¼ ~ i Di þ V
H (4) The autocorrelation matrix of the received signal is
i¼1 written as
~ i is defined as
where H Rj ¼ E[X j X Hj ] (8)
The SVD of Rj yields
~ T1,i    H
~ i ¼ [H
H ~ TN ,i ]T (5)
" #
r


L 0 U Tsj
and V represents the noise denoted as V ¼ Rj ¼ [U sj U nj ] s (9)
[V T1 V T2 . . . V TNr ]T
0 Ln U Tnj

where U sj and U nj represent the orthogonal signal and

3 Blind channel estimation
The use of training symbols and different pilot symbol
structures for uplink and downlink scenarios has been
proposed for the SC-CDMA with block transmission
by Madhukumar et al. [9]. In this section, we propose
two blind channel estimation schemes for SC-CDMA
with FDE, namely the subspace-based method and the
ACM.
noise subspaces, respectively, whereas Ls and Ln
denote the diagonal matrices containing the
corresponding singular values of signal and noise
subspaces. The orthogonality between the signal and
noise subspaces results in (6) being modified to yield
the following equation [28]
U Hnj C tj,i hj,i ¼ 0 (10)

3.1 Subspace method The key equation in the subspace method is the
minimisation of the following quadratic cost function
The subspace-based method utilises the guard-band to
estimate the signature waveform, which is the
convolution of the channel and users spreading code h^ j,i ¼ arg min khHj,i Q j,i hj,i k2 (11)
khj,i k¼1
[24, 25]. The system models used in [24, 25, 28]
were that of DS-CDMA system with no guard-band where the matrix Qj,i for user i is given by
structure and using the whole signal with ISI. Our
model is similar but with the significant difference of
having a guard-band to avoid IBI, while utilising the Q j,i ¼ C Htj,i U nj U Hnj C tj,i (12)

496 / IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493– 503 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 www.ietdl.org

The solution is obtained by taking the eigenvector Utilising the equivalence of (13) and (15), we obtain the
corresponding to the lowest eigenvalue. following equation

3.2 Autocorrelation contribution v H C Htj,i R1 1

j Rj,bi Rj C tj,1 v
h^ j,i ¼ arg max (16)
The ACM employs the whole received signal with the kvk¼1 v H C Htj,i R1
j C tj,i v
guard-band intact and utilises the structure afforded by
the guard-band to blindly estimate the channel. This is where Rj,bi ¼ hj,i hHj,i is the subspace matrix of desired
different from the case examined in [27] for DS- user symbols bi , and h^ j,i denotes the estimate of
CDMA systems, where the entire ISI affected signal channel of user i. The matrix Rj,bi contains the
was used to obtain channel estimates blindly. In the subspace of the entire signal including that of the
setup described here, the redundant nature of the CP interfering users. The matrices Rj,bi and Rj are related
serves two purposes namely the elimination of the ISI as follows
and also blind channel estimation.
Rj ¼ Rj,bi þ s2 I (17)
As in the MC-CDMA case [29], the equivalence of
the SINR and MMSE receivers is used as the starting The ACM algorithm for the SC-CDMA case can be
point for the derivation of the algorithm for the SC- expressed as
CDMA case. There are significant differences between
the application of ACM in MC-CDMA and SC- v H CHtj,i R1 2 1
j (Rj  s I)Rj C tj,i v
CDMA, the first and most important of which is that h^ j,i ¼ arg max (18)
in SC-CDMA, the blind channel estimation is done kvk¼1 v H C Htj,i R1
j C tj,i v
before the guard removal and application of FFT in
contrast to MC-CDMA case, where the received
signal is first stripped off its guard-band and then Using the equation above, the channel impulse
transferred to frequency domain via FFT [29]. In the response between jth receive antenna and user i can
case of MC-CDMA [29]. the diagonal structure of the be estimated as
channel matrix is utilised, whereas in SC-CDMA
systems, this is no longer the case because of the v H C Htj,i R2
j C tj,i v
shifting of the IFFT from transmitter to receiver side h^ j,i ¼ arg min 1
(19)
kvk¼1 v H C H
tj,i Rj C tj,i v
resulting in the loss of diagonal structure of the
channel matrix.
4 Equalisation
Thus the equations to be used will be different from
those in MC-CDMA case, and these are derived as 4.1 MMSE equaliser
follows. The general MMSE weight vectors for the The received signal, after the blind channel estimation
guard-band inserted received signals for user i at
stage, is stripped off its guard-band and then FFT
receive antenna j are given as processed. The frequency domain signal is then
equalised using a FDE, which is advantageous
w mmsej,i ¼ R1
j C tj,i hj,i (13) compared with using a TDE equaliser [12]. The FFT-
processed block of received signal can be equalised by
where Rj is the autocorrelation matrix at receive different schemes, but we focus on the MMSE [9] and
antenna j and hj,i is the channel impulse response the LSFE equalisers in the next section. The soft
from transmit antenna (i.e. user) i to receive antenna estimate d^ i of di for user i is given as
j with C tj,i as defined in (7) Rj can also be defined as
d^ i ¼ w Hmmse,i X (20)
X
Nt
Rj ¼ hj,i hj,i þ hj,k hj,k þ s2 I (14) where X is the net received signal as defined in (4). The
k¼1
k=i
MMSE equaliser for ith user w mmse,i is expressed as
shown below with H ^ i denoting the estimate of H i
where s2 is the noise power. The maximum signal to !1
interference plus noise ratio weight vector for user i X Nt

can be written as w mmse,i ¼ H ^ Hi þ s2 I

^ iH ^i
H (21)
i¼1
H
v C tj,i hj,i hHj,i C tj,i v
w msinrj,i ¼ arg max (15) The equalised signals are then passed through the
kvk¼1 v H Rj v IFFT stage to transform the signals back to time

& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008 IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493 – 503/ 497
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
www.ietdl.org

domain before despreading. Finally, the despread signals

are fed into a hard decision device to obtain the final
estimate of user’s signal.

4.2 LSFE detector

The LSFE detector is similar to the one described for
MC-CDMA [29] with one key difference. After using
FDE and cancelling the interference in frequency
domain, the equalised signal is IFFT processed before
being depsread and sent to a hard decision device.
As mentioned previously, the blind channel
estimation is done before the removal of GB and
application of FFT. After ordering the users based on
the strength of the received signal that is SNR values,
the strongest signal is detected first [18, 32]. After
detection, the interference caused by the detected user
is removed yielding a modified received signal sans the
strongest user. The next strongest user is detected and
the process repeated till all the users information are
detected.
The block diagram of the LSFE is shown in Fig. 3,
which consists of a blind channel estimation stage
followed by Nt LSFE stages performing interference
cancellation. The LSFE technique is modified such that
the ordering of the streams is done based on the sum
of all mean square error (MSE) values calculated for
each user. After detection of each of the users, the
effects of the detected user are cancelled from the
remaining signal. After cancelling the interference
caused by the detected signal, the corresponding
channel values are also removed to leave the
undetected stream with its corresponding channel
coefficients.
Fig. 4 shows a particular stage of the LSFE equaliser/
detector [18], where the FDE block performs
equalisation as well as interference cancellation, before
the hard decision is made by the decision device. At
the end of each stage, the interference from the
already detected user(s) is cancelled from the received
Figure 4 Particular LSFE stage
signals yielding modified received signals with less
interference. Thus all users are detected and their
corresponding interferences are cancelled in a
successive manner.
Assuming perfect interference cancellation at each
stage, the received signal at a particular stage on the
nth subcarrier can be written as
X
X[n] ¼ H k [n]dk [n] þ V[n] (22)
k
where k denotes summation over the undetected users.
X[n] is the net received signal on subcarrier n
represented as X[n] ¼ [X1 [n]X2 [n] . . . XNr [n]]T :H k [n]
represents the channel matrix for user k given as
H k [n] ¼ [H1,k [n]H2,k [n] . . . HNr ,k [n]]T and dk [n] ¼ ck [n]
sk [n] denotes the spread signal of user k on
subcarrier n.
The MSE is defined as follows
MSEin ¼ Ej^si [n]  si [n]j2 (23)
where ^si [n] is the soft estimate of si . The FDE
coefficients are calculated based on the MSE criterion.
The soft estimate of di for user i is given as
d^ i ¼ w Hi X (24)
where w i is the weight vector over all subcarriers for the
user i, which can be expressed as w i ¼ [w Ti [1]
w Ti [2]    w Ti [N]]T . The weight vectors w i [n] for the
nth subcarrier can be expressed as

w i [n] ¼ R1 ^
i [n]H i [n] (25)

where Ri [n] is the autocorrelation matrix of the channel

response on each subcarrier n for user i and is expressed as
X
Ri [n] ¼ H ^ Hk [n] þ s2 I
^ k [n]H (26)
k

with k denoting the summation over undetected user

Figure 3 Uplink SC-CDMA LSFE receiver signals. The resulting MSE for subcarrier n for user i is

498 / IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493– 503 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 www.ietdl.org

given by

1XN 1
MSEin ¼ 1  ^ Hi [n]R1
H ^
i [n]H i [n] (27)
N n¼0

The decision variable, which determines the ordering

of the streams, is given by the sum of all the MSE values
for each subcarrier as shown below
X
N
MSEi ¼ MSEin (28)
n¼1

The ordering is done from the smallest MSE to the

largest and detection of signals is then performed in
this order.
Figure 5 Performance of ACM and subspace against known
5 Simulation results channel for 2
2 MIMO SC-CDMA uplink system with
N ¼ 32, L ¼ 4
The simulation setup mainly involved an uplink MIMO
SC-CDMA system with two transmit antennas and two
receive antennas unless otherwise specified. The number
of subcarriers (i.e. block length) was set to N ¼ 32 with
channel modelled as quasi-static block Rayleigh fading
channel which remains constant over the duration of a
block. The channel impulse length was set to L ¼ 4
with uniform power delay profile and root mean
square (rms) delay spread of 1.153 ms. The CP length
(Lcp ) was set equal to the channel length L, that is
Lcp ¼ L. A frame size of Ns ¼ 100 blocks was used
throughout. As blind channel estimation methods yield
estimates upto a scalar factor, a pilot symbol was used
to obtain the scaling factor and one pilot symbol was
used for each transmit – receive antenna pair. Walsh –
Hadamard codes, of size N, that is equal to the
number of subcarriers, were used throughout because
of their orthogonal nature. The BER results are
obtained as averaged over 1000 Monte-Carlo runs for
the setup described. BPSK modulation was used for in Figure 6 Performance of LSFE against MMSE for 2
2
all the simulations. ‘ACM’ represents the ACM, MIMO SC-CDMA uplink with N ¼ 32, L ¼ 4
‘SUB’ represents the subspace-based method and
‘Perfect Channel’ represents the known channel case.
As shown, at an SNR of 20 dB, LSFE provides an
Fig. 5 compares the MMSE BER performances of a improvement of almost an order of magnitude
simple MIMO SC-CDMA uplink system using known compared with the MMSE equaliser, using the blind
channel and blind channel estimates obtained via channel estimates obtained from the subspace- and the
subspace and ACM-based methods. As is clearly seen, ACM-based approaches.
while both the blind channel estimate based
performances do converge at high SNR, at lower SNR Fig. 7 illustrates the gains that are achieved through
the ACM-based estimate performs better as a result of the use of receive diversity at the receiver (base-
the use of the entire correlation matrix as opposed to station) end. The extra diversity afforded by multiple
the noise subspace in subspace-based approach. receive antennas provides significant gains. As is seen,
the subspace- and ACM-based LSFE equaliser achieve
Fig. 6 shows the improvement in performance similar performance levels as expected with the ACM
obtained as a result of using LSFE over the performing better at lower SNR. At SNR of 20 dB,
conventional MMSE equaliser. Here the interference the two transmit, four receive antenna systems yield
cancellation of the detected users’ signal at each stage nearly an order of magnitude improvement compared
is responsible for the improvement in performance. with the two transmit, two receive antenna systems.

& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008 IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493 – 503/ 499
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
www.ietdl.org

Figure 7 Performance of subspace þ LSFE and ACM þ LSFE Figure 9 Performance of LSFE and MMSE for MIMO SC-
for two transmit antenna and two, four receive antennas CDMA uplink system with N ¼ 32, L ¼ 4 and varying
MIMO SC-CDMA uplink with N ¼ 32, L ¼ 4 number of users (Nu)

Fig. 8 shows the performance of LSFE and MMSE and detection. In this analysis, only matrix
equalisers using the blind estimates as channel length multiplications and matrix inverse operations are
increases at the SNR of 20 dB. It is seen that the considered. The tabulated results are presented in
performance does not vary much as channel length Tables 1 and 2.
varies. Again the improved performance of LSFE is
illustrated as compared with MMSE equaliser.
6.1 Subspace algorithm
Fig. 9 illustrates the effect of MAI on a two transmit,
two receive antenna systems at the base-station. As the The subspace channel estimation method involves:
number of users increases, the performance gets worse,
but it is clear that the ACM-based estimates perform 1. Correlation at each receive antenna
slightly better overall as compared with the subspace-
based estimates.
The complexity of which is N 2 Ns , where Ns is the
number of symbols and N is the number of carriers.
Thus the net computations required will be
6 Complexity analysis
The numerical complexity is presented below for the
two stages involved, namely the channel estimation CostR ¼ Nr N 2 Ns (29)

2. The least squares approach to solving the (11) using

(12) results in

Costls,i ¼ N 6 L3 (30)

Table 1 Channel estimation complexity

Cost Subspace ACM

2
CostR NrP Ns NrP 2Ns
Costls NtP 6L 3 Nr þ NsP 2 þ NtP 3
(P 3 þ 2P 4L 2 þ 1)
Totalcost NrP 2Ns þ NtP 6L 3 Nr þ NsP 2 þ NtP 3
(P 3 þ 2P 4L 2 þ 1)

Figure 8 Performance of LSFE and MMSE for 2
2 MIMO Nr, no. of receive antenna; Nt , no. of transmit antennas; P,
SC-CDMA uplink system with N ¼ 32 and varying L Block length; L, channel order; Ns , no. of symbols

500 / IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493– 503 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 www.ietdl.org

Table 2 Detection complexity 6.3.1 MMSE detector: The MMSE detector as

MMSE LSFE expressed in (21) yields complexity as follows
NtN2r N3(Nt þ 1 þ NrN) Nr(N2r þ N3r þ N2t NrN 3(Nt Costwmmse,i ¼ Nr2 N 3 þ Nr3 N 3 þ Nr2 Nt N 3 (38)
þ NrN þ 1) þ (Nt 2 1)NNs)
Costwmmse ¼ Nt
Costwmmse,i (39)
Nr, no. of receive antenna; Nt , no. of transmit antennas;
N, no. of subcarriers; Ns , no. of symbols
yielding

Costwmmse ¼ Nt Nr2 N 3 (Nt þ 1 þ Nr N) (40)

Thus the total cost for all user is given as
6.3.2 LSFE detector: The stages involved in LSFE are
Costls ¼ Nt N 6 L3 (31)
1. Ordering of users/streams based on MSE. The main
Thus the total cost could be written as equation here is
Costsub ¼ CostR þ Costls (32) Costlsfe1 ¼ Nr3 þ Nr4 (41)

which is futher simplified as 2. Detection of ordered stream using MMSE for each
user/stream. This would be the same value as above
Costsub ¼ Nr N 2 Ns þ Nt N 6 L3 (33) but multipleid by Nt times for each user

Costlsfe2 ¼ Nt2 Nr2 N 3 (Nt þ 1 þ Nr N) (42)

6.2 ACM algorithm
Similarly for ACM algorithm, the following steps are 3. Cancellation of detected stream for all Nt  1 stages
involved

1. Auto-correlation for each receive antenna Costlsfe3 ¼ (Nt  1)Nr NNs (43)

Therefore the total cost of LSFE can be written as

The same stage as in subspace which yields a
complexity cost of Costlsfe ¼ Costlsfe1 þ Costlsfe2 þ Costlsfe3 (44)

CostR ¼ Nr N 2 Ns (34) 7 Conclusions

We have proposed two blind channel estimation methods
2. Minimisation of the criterion for user 1 using (19) for the uplink MIMO SC-CDMA systems with block
gives a complexity cost of transmission, namely the subspace-based method and
the ACM. Both the methods provide close performance
Costls,1 ¼ N 6 þ N 7 L2 þ N 3 þ N 7 L2 (35) to the case with perfect channel knowledge, without
any training data required. The ACM provides similar
performance to the subspace approach with the added
Thus cost for all users will be advantage that it eliminates the need for an initial SVD,
rank determination and noise power estimation. In
addition, LSFE is integrated with blind channel
Costls ¼ Nt N 3 (N 3 þ 2N 4 L2 þ 1) (36) estimation, which significantly outperforms the linear
MMSE-based equaliser. Also to be noted is the stability
Thus the total cost can be written as of SC-CDMA system to varying channel length. The
performance gains obtained via receive diversity are also
CostACM ¼ Nr þ Ns N 2 þ Nt N 3 (N 3 þ 2N 4 L2 þ 1) shown.
(37)
8 Acknowledgment
Sonu Punnoose would like to acknowledge the financial
6.3 Detection support from the Overseas Research Studentship
The complexity cost involved for detection is explained Awards Scheme, UK, and the University of Liverpool,
below. UK. The authors would also like to thank the

& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008 IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493 – 503/ 501
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
www.ietdl.org
anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and
suggestions on this paper.
9 References
[1] PRASAD R. : ‘CDMA for wireless personal
communications’ Mobile communication series (Artech
House Publishers, 1996)
[2] ADACHI F., GARG D., TAKAOKA S., TAKEDA K.: ‘Broadband CDMA
techniques’, IEEE Commun. Mag., 2005, pp. 8 – 18
[3] WANG Z., GIANNAKIS G.B.: ‘Wireless multi-carrier
communications – where Fourier meets Shannon’, IEEE
Signal Process. Mag., 2000, 17, (3), pp. 29– 48
[4] WANG Z., MA X., GIANNAKIS G.B.: ‘OFDM or single-carrier
block transmissions’, IEEE Trans. Commun., 2004, 52, (3),
pp. 380– 394
[5] MUQUET B., WANG Z., GIANNAKIS G.B., COURVILLE M., DUHAMEL P.:
‘Cyclic prefixing or zero-padding for wireless multicarrier
transmissions’, IEEE Trans. Commun., 2002, 50, (12),
pp. 2136 – 2148
[6] HARA S. , PRASAD R.: ‘Overview of multicarrier CDMA’,
Commun. Mag., 1997, 35, (12), pp. 126 – 133
[7] YEE N., LINNARTZ J.P. , FETTWEIS G.: ‘Multi-carrier CDMA
in indoor wireless radio networks’. Proc. 4th IEEE Int. Symp.
Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications,
Yokohama, Japan, September 1993, pp. 109 – 113
[8] CHOULY A., BRAJAL A., JOURDAN S.: ‘Orthogonal multicarrier
techniques applied to direct sequence spread spectrum
CDMA systems’. Proc. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conf.,
Houston, Texas, USA, November 1993, vol. 3, pp. 1723–1728
[9] MADHUKUMAR A.S., CHIN F., LIANG Y.C., YANG K.: ‘Single-carrier
cyclic prefix-assisted CDMA system with frequency
domain equalisation for high data rate transmission’,
EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw., 2004, 1, pp 149– 160
[10] BAUM K., THOMAS T., VOOK F., NANGIA N.: ‘Cyclic-prefix CDMA:
an improved transmission method for broadband DS-CDMA
cellular systems’. Proc. IEEE Wireless Communications and
Networking Conf., Orlando, March 2002, vol. 1,
pp. 183– 188
[11] BURG A., RUPP M., HAENE S., PERELS D., FLEBER N., FICHTNER W.: ‘Low-
complexity frequency domain equalization of MIMO channels
with applications to MIMO-CDMA systems’. Proc. IEEE
Vehicular Technology Conf., October 2003, vol. 1, pp. 468–472
[12] GARG D., ADACHI F.: ‘DS-CDMA with frequency domain
equalization for high-speed downlink packet access’. IEEE
502 / IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493– 503
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014
Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Proc. Vehicular Technology Conf., September 2004, vol. 1,
pp. 689– 693
[13] SILVA P., DINIS R.: ‘Frequency domain multiuser detection for
CP-Assisted DS-CDMA signals’. Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology
Conf., Melbourne, May 2006, vol. 5, pp. 2103–2108
[14] SILVA P., DINIS R.: ‘Multiuser detection for the uplink of
prefix-assisted DS-CDMA systems employing multiple
transmit and receive antennas’. Proc. IEEE Vehicular
Technology Conf., Montreal, September 2006, pp. 1 – 5
[15] WINTERS J.: ‘On the capacity of radio communication
systems with diversity in a Rayleigh fading environment’,
IEEE J. Sel. Areas Coomun., 1987, 5, pp. 871– 878
[16] FOSCHINI G.J.: ‘Layered space time architecture for wireless
communication in a fading environment when using mulitple
antennas’, Bell Labs Tech. J., 1996, 1, pp. 41–59
[17] FOSCHINI G.J., GANS M.J. : ‘On limits of wireless
communications in a fading environment when using
multiple antennas’, Wirel. Pers. Commun., 1998, 6, (3),
pp. 311– 335
[18] ZHU X., MURCH R.D.: ‘Layered space frequency equalization in
a single carrier MIMO system for frequency selective channels’,
IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun., 2004, 5, (5), pp. 701–708
[19] WANG Q., LI B., YANG D.: ‘Low complexity layered space-
frequency scheme for MIMO-CDMA system’. Proc. Int.
Conf. Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile
Computing, September 2005, vol. 1, pp. 139– 142
[20] CARDOSO J.F.: ‘Blind signal separation: statistical
principles’, Proc. IEEE, 1998, 9, (10), pp. 2009 – 2025
[21] MENDEL J.M.: ‘Tutorial on higher-order statistics (spectra)
in signal processing and system theory: theoretical results
and some applications’, Proc. IEEE, 1991, 79, (3),
pp. 278– 305
[22] TONG L., XU G., KAILATH T.: ‘Blind identification and
equalization based on second-order statistics: a time
domain approach’, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, 1994, 40, (2),
pp. 340– 349
[23] TONG L., PERREAU S.: ‘Multichannel blind identification:
from suspace to maximum likelihood methods’, Proc.
IEEE, 1998, 86, (10), pp. 1951 – 1968
[24] LIU H. , XU G.: ‘A subspace method for signature
waveform estimation in synchronous CDMA systems’, IEEE
Trans. Commun., 1996, 44, (10), pp. 1346 – 1354
[25] DOUKOPOULOS X.G. , MOUSTAKIDES G.V. : ‘Blind channel
estimation for downlink CDMA systems’. IEEE Int. Conf.
Communications, May 2003, vol. 4, pp. 2416 – 2420
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008

[26] XU Z. : ‘Blind channel estimation via subspace
approximation’. Asilomar Conf. Signals Syst. Comput.,
2003, vol. 52, pp. 1653 – 1657
[27] CHEN S., CONSTANTINIDES A.G.: ‘Optimum SINR receiver in
dispersive CDMA channels’. Personal, Indoor and Mobile
Radio Communications, 2004, PIMRC 15th IEEE Int.
Symp., 5 – 8 September 2004, vol. 4, pp. 2519 – 2523
[28] KANG W., CHAMPAGNE B.: ‘Generalized blind subspace
channel estimation’. Proc. Vehicular Technology Conf.,
October 2003, vol. 2, pp. 1209 – 1213
[29] PUNNOOSE S., ZHU X., NANDI A.K.: ‘Blind channel estimation
for MIMO uplink MC-CDMA systems with layered space
frequency equalisation’. Proc. Second Int. Conf. Wireless
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008
Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on August 2, 2009 at 04:29 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
www.ietdl.org
Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing,
Wuhan, September 2006, vol. 1, pp. 1 – 4
[30] YANG K., MADHUKUMAR A.S., CHIN F.: ‘Novel two-dimensional
multi-stage interference cancellation scheme for uplink
transmission of single carrier cyclic prefix-assisted CDMA
system’, IEE Proc. Commun., 2003, 150, (4), pp. 287 – 292
[31] GOLUB G.H. : ‘Matrix computations’ (John Hopkins
University Press, 1996, 3rd edn.), ISBN:0801854148
[32] PUNNOOSE S., ZHU X., NANDI A.K.: ‘Layered space frequency
equalisation for MIMO-MC-CDMA systems in frequency
selective fading channels’. Proc. 5th Int. Conf. Independent
Component Analysis and Blind Signal Separation, Granada,
Spain, September 2004, pp. 1181–1188
IET Commun., 2008, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 493 – 503/ 503
doi: 10.1049/iet-com:20070014