Joint Performance Study of Channel Estimation and Multiuser Detection for Uplink Long-Code CDMA Systems

Although numerous channel estimation and multiuser detection approaches have appeared for long-code uplink CDMA systems, joint performance study of channel estimators and symbol detectors remains largely open. In this paper, we construct three typical symbol-level linear receivers upon existing channel estimation method, known as zero-forcing (ZF), minimum mean-square-error (MMSE), and RAKE receivers, for symbol detection. Since the channel estimation error is rippled to the linear receivers, performance of all receivers is thus jointly analyzed with the channel estimator from a perturbation perspective. Extensive simulation examples involving different communication environments demonstrate high consistency between our analysis and experimental results.