In this paper, a new receiver for downlink multicarrier code-division multiple-access (MC-CDMA) system is proposed when the channel between the transmitter and each user is multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). The structure of the proposed receiver is based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) method. The conventional SVD method is able to eliminate the co-space interference (CSI) in single user scenario, however, due to multi-channel environment, it is not able to eliminate the co-space interferences caused by the transmitted signals to the other users that is called multiuser interference (MUI). By combining the SVD and space frequency spreading code, a receiver called total interference cancellation (TIC) is developed that completely eliminates both the CSI and the MUI. The performance of the TIC suffers from small singular values of the subchannel matrices. To improve the performance, a symbol-chip level MMSE receiver is developed in which joint equalization and beamforming is utilized at chip level when the MMSE criterion is employed at symbol level (after despreading). The performance of the proposed receiver is evaluated and compared under different scenarios by computer simulations. The results show that there is no error floor in the bit error rate (BER) performances of the SVD based receiver under both criteria in the multiuser environment. Compared with the TIC criterion, the receiver designed based on the symbol-chip level MMSE criterion significantly improves the BER performance.

Keywords