Performance analysis of multiuser DS-CDMA in MIMO systems over Rayleigh fading channels

The performance of space-time transmit diversity is examined in a multiuser direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) system over fast- and slow-fading channels. The underlying space-time system employs N=2 transmit antennas and M receive antennas at the mobile user and receiver base station, respectively. We consider the performance of the space-time multiuser system when using the linear decorrelator detector to combat the effect of multiuser interference. In our analysis, we derive a closed-form expression for the probability of bit error for both fast- and slow-fading channels. These theoretical results are shown to be very accurate when compared to system simulations. Both simulations and theoretical results prove that, regardless of the system load, the full diversity order of 2N M for fast-fading channels and N M for slow-fading channels is always maintained, and only a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) loss is incurred. This SNR loss is proved to be a function of only the number of users (i.e., level of interference) and independent of the number of transmit and/or receive antennas. Using our theoretical results, we show that the loss in SNR from the single-user bound can be well approximated by 10 log(C/2), where C represents the level of multiuser interference.