Linear versus Non-linear Interference Cancellation

In this paper we compare linear and non-linear inter-ference cancellation for systems employing code division multi-ple access (CDMA) techniques. Specifically, we examine linear and non-linear parallel interference cancellation(also called multi-stage cancellation) in relationship to other multiuser detection al-gorithms. We show the explicit relationship between parallel inter-ference cancellation and the decorrelator (or direct matrix inver-sion). This comparison gives insight into the performance of paral-lel interference cancellation (PIC) and leads to vetter approaches. We also show that non-linear PIC approaches with explicit chan-nel setimation can provide performance improvement over linear PIC, especially when using soft non-linear symbol estimates. The application of interference cancellation to non-linear modulation techniques is also presented along with a discussion on minimum mean-squared error(MMSE) symbol estimation techniques. These are shown to further improve the performance of parallel cancella-tion.