Comparative analysis of conventional and multiuser detectors in multisensor receivers

Multiuser detection has been proposed to improve the performance of direct-sequence spread-spectrum code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems. Use of multiple sensors (antenna elements or base stations) can be used to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and counter the effects of fading in any communication system. In this paper, multisensor multiuser detection is analyzed. It is shown by analysis and numerical examples that the use of multiple sensors averages the multiple-access interference (MAI) out towards zero even without multiuser detection. The performance of linear multisensor receivers with and without multiuser detection is analyzed and compared. The examples show that relatively good performance can be obtained without multiuser detection with moderate number of users and under a reasonable near-far problem.