Arrayed MC-CDMA reception in space-time diffused multipath vector channels

Multi-Carrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA) is a modulation scheme that combines the advantages of OFDM and CDMA to provide robustness against frequency selectivity in wireless channels. Arrayed MC-CDMA systems combine MC-CDMA and antenna array technology to harness the spatial and temporal ’signatures’ of received signals, thus making it possible to realize high transmission rates envisioned for next generation wireless communications. Localized scattering, which occurs for each multipath, motivates the frequency selective wireless channel to be modelled as a diffused vector channel. In this paper, space-time diffused vector channels for arrayed MC-CDMA systems are modelled and analyzed. Simulation studies show that the use of this diffused channel modelling in arrayed MC-CDMA receivers yields better bit error rate (BER) and SNIRout performance than receivers that ignore the presence of spatial and/or temporal diffusion. Index Terms Antenna arrays, MC-CDMA, channel estimation, multipath channels, spatial diffusion, angular spread.