Robust Decorrelating Detector in Multi-Path Fading Under Impulsive Noise

In direct-sequence code-division multiple-access systems, impulsive noise leads to increased bit error rates and hence limits the performance. The main novel contribution of this paper is the improvement achieved on the decorrelating detector by the addition of a nonlinear clipper in order to eliminate impulsive components. The system is studied under multi-path fading with impulsive noise. It is assumed that the user signals have unequal powers (near/far effect) which make it challenging to determine the threshold in the clipper structure. These cases are studied and it is shown that the proposed robust receiver reduces the impact of impulsive noise by eliminating extreme amplitudes.