Experiments on pilot symbol-assisted coherent multistage interference canceller for DS-CDMA mobile radio

A three-stage coherent multistage interference canceller (COMSIC) employing pilot symbol-assisted (PSA) channel estimation for replica generation of multiple access interference (MAI) is implemented and its performance in the presence of frequency selective multipath fading is experimentally evaluated by a multipath fading simulator. A fast transmission power control (TPC) method suitable for COMSIC is also proposed, in which the signal-to-interference plus background noise power ratio (SIR) at the matched filter (MF) based Rake receiver is measured to achieve a short TPC delay and the target signal-to-interference ratio value is compensated by an outer loop so that the measured block error rate (BLER) is equal to the prescribed target value. The experimental results show that as expected the COMSIC satisfactorily reduces the MAI even when the number of active users is equal to the spreading factor in a multipath fading environment, and thus, improves the bit error rate (BER) performance in a multiuser environment. The results also show that the proposed fast TPC method with a two-slot delay associated with COMSIC works satisfactorily and the combination of COMSIC and fast TPC significantly decreases the transmission power of a mobile station (required transmission power of a mobile station with COMSIC at the average BER of 10 ^-3 is decreased by approximately 2.0 (3.0) dB compared with the MF-based Rake receiver with (without) antenna diversity reception). This extends the cell coverage, battery life, and increases the system capacity in the reverse link.