An iterative multiuser decoder for near-capacity communications

The combination of forward error correction (FEC) coding and random interleaving is shown to overcome the limitations of multiuser detectors/decoders when the user cross correlations are high. In particular, one can asymptotically achieve single-user performance in a highly correlated multiuser system. In addition, an optimal iterative multiuser detector is derived from iterative techniques for cross-entropy minimization. A practical suboptimal implementation of this algorithm is presented, and simulations demonstrate that, even with highly correlated users, it achieves optimal asymptotic efficiency. The effects of the theoretical limits on channel capacity are evident in many of the simulation results. The complexity of the suboptimal algorithm is approximately (O(2/sup K/)+O(2/sup /spl kappa//)) per bit per iteration where K is the number of users and /spl kappa/ is the code constraint length.