Microsoft Word - EW_15_11_2006.DOC

This paper investigates the effect of user position on the performance of a near optimal SIC receiver in an uplinkOFDM system. Multi-user detection is made possible through cooperation between different access point and joint detection at a single central point. To reduce computational complexity, the number of incoming data streams are decoupled through a linear pre-filter which is followed by simple bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM). The user data streams are detected sequentially based on the mutual information in their code words. The resulting frame error rate curves for different QAM modulations are plotted as a function of average SNR for different user positions, and compared against the performance of genie PIC. The results show a considerable improvement in performance at the inner cell edges of the cooperating cells. The receiver behavior is also investigated for different power control strategies and for varying cell loads. Finally, to see how these link level results would translate into system level performance gains, the average throughput in a cell for a distributed antenna system is calculated by plugging link level simulation results into a system level simulator.