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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

CDMA Downlink Interference Suppression

Using I /Q Projection
Gregory E. Bottomley, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractInterference suppression at the receiver can be used

to improve performance and capacity in the downlink of direct-sequence code-division multiple-access systems. In this paper, an interference suppression technique is developed which uses partial
knowledge of spreading sequences to cancel a group of interfering
signals. Specifically, knowledge of a complex scrambling sequence
is used to project the desired signal away from the interference in
the in-phase/quadrature ( / ) complex plane. A maximum likelihood receiver formulation is used, treating both the desired signal
and interference as being conditionally noncircular. A zero-forcing
equalization approach is used to preserve orthogonality between
signals from the same base station. The development of the technique is based on the assumption that the group of signals corresponds to another base station that does not transmit the signal of
interest. However, the technique is also applied to the path diversity scenario (dispersion, soft handoff, transmit delay diversity),
in which the group of interfering signals includes a desired signal
component. The approach, referred to as / projection, provides
significant gains when performance is interference limited.
Index TermsCode-division multiaccess, digital radio, fading
channels, interference suppression, spread spectrum communication.

I. INTRODUCTION

N DIRECT-SEQUENCE code-division multiple-access

(DS-CDMA) cellular communication systems, performance
is often limited by multiple-access interference (MAI). In the
downlink or forward link (base station to mobile station), a
key source of interference is MAI from other base stations
(other-cell interference). In this paper, we use the modulation
and spreading code structure of the downlink to suppress
other-cell interference.
Specifically, we focus on the modulation and spreading code
structure present in the downlink of the Telecommunications
Industry Association/Electronic Industries Alliance 95-B
(TIA/EIA-95-B) system [1]. [This system is often referred to as
Interim Standard 95 (IS-95)]. Spreading codes are formed from
a user-specific real Walsh codeword followed by scrambling
using a cell-specific complex scrambling sequence based
on two zero-extended pseudonoise sequences. The resulting
spreading code is modulated by a binary symbol using binary
phase-shift keying (BPSK). This structure is also present in
the cdma2000 system [2], though other modes which use
quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) symbols are defined as
well.

Manuscript received June 4, 2001; revised April 22, 2002 and November 4,
2002; accepted November 7, 2002. The editor coordinating the review of this
paper and approving it for publication is W.-Y. Kuo.
The author is with Ericsson Inc., Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA
(greg.bottomley@ericsson.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2003.817434

At the mobile station, the receiver is typically unaware of

what user-specific codes are being used by another base station.
However, the receiver is aware of the cell-specific scrambling
sequence used by nearby base stations. This knowledge is used
to make signal strength measurements on the pilot channels of
nearby base stations to assist in handoff from one cell to another. Thus, the mobile receiver has partial knowledge of the
spreading sequences being used by nearby base stations.
To see how this partial knowledge can be used, consider one
interfering user signal from another base station. When the interferers complex scrambling sequence is known, the remaining
unknown part of the interferers signal is the real Walsh code
and the real binary information symbols (BPSK modulation).
As a result, each interfering chip value can be represented as
a vector in the complex plane formed by the in-phase ( ) and
quadrature ( ) components of the received baseband signal.
The unknown part is purely real, so it simply scales and possibly inverts the interference vector. The desired signal can also
be represented as a vector in the complex plane, and it can be
projected away from the interference vector, providing interference suppression. Because all users from the same base station
share the same complex scrambling sequence, interference from
multiple users is suppressed simultaneously.
In this paper, a maximum likelihood (ML) formulation is
used to develop a receiver structure for suppressing other-cell
interference based on partial knowledge of an interfering base
stations spreading codes. The ML solution leads to a form
of despreading, in which chip values are weighted unequally.
When other in-cell signals are present, this leads to a loss of
orthogonality with respect to in-cell user signals. To compensate
for this problem, a zero-forcing (ZF) equalization solution
is developed, which preserves orthogonality with respect to
in-cell users, at the expense of less other-cell interference
suppression. The overall receiver solution is referred to as inphase/quadrature ( / ) projection, as it includes a component
that projects the desired signal away from interference in the
/ plane.
Both signal and interference are modeled as being conditionally noncircular, conditioned on knowledge of the complex
scrambling sequences. Circularity is defined as follows. A zeromean, complex-valued Gaussian random variable is defined to
be circular [3] or proper [4] if the expected value of the variable
times itself (not times its conjugate) is zero. This implies that
the real and imaginary parts have the same variance and are uncorrelated. Otherwise, the random variable is noncircular. The
notion of circularity can been extended to non-Gaussian quantities [3], [5].
When signals are noncircular, linear estimation by filtering
the signal and its conjugate, referred to as linear conjugate-linear

1536-1276/03$17.00 2003 IEEE

BOTTOMLEY: CDMA DOWNLINK INTERFERENCE SUPPRESSION USING /

PROJECTION

(LCL) filtering, can reduce mean-square error [6]. Alternatively,

the real and imaginary parts of the signal can be filtered separately [6]. LCL filtering has been used as a part of frequencyshift filtering, which also utilizes the cyclostationarity of signals
[7].
Similar structures occur in vector processing. Applying mean
square estimation using a Gaussian vector input, it was shown
that the resulting estimate is obtained by linearly processing the
vector and its conjugate, referred to as widely linear estimation
[8]. In array processing, processing of a vector and its conjugate,
has been applied to source separation [9][14] and signal detection [15]. The approach can also be used to cancel noncircular
interference [16], [17] and to suppress narrowband interference
[18], [19]. Noncircularity of the desired signal can be used to
improve linear prediction [20] and to improve channel estimation, based on second-order statistics, when the noise is circular
[21], [22].
For demodulation of noncircular spread-spectrum signals,
past work has focussed on the case when both the desired
and interfering signals employ BPSK modulation and BPSK
spreading sequences. In [23], the matched filter expressions are
extended to noncircular or improper Gaussian noise and applied
to the case of a single, synchronous interferer, in which the
spreading sequence is completely known. In [24], a minimum
mean-square-error (MMSE) multiuser detector is developed for
BPSK modulation and known spreading sequences. In [25] and
[26], adaptive MMSE detection by adaptive filtering of the real
and imaginary parts of the received signal is used to suppress
BPSK modulated interference when the BPSK interfering
spreading sequences are unknown, but periodic.
By contrast, the / projection approach assumes partial
knowledge of an interferers QPSK spreading sequence, the
common scrambling sequence. Without this knowledge, the
interfering signals appear to be circular due to the complex
scrambling. It is the knowledge of the complex scrambling
sequence that provides conditional noncircularity, which leads
to interference suppression gains relative to conventional
reception.
The receiver is formulated for the case of nondispersive, chipsynchronous, other-cell interference. While these assumptions
may appear restrictive, they correspond to a situation in which
interference is not easily suppressed. When other-cell interference is asynchronous, techniques which exploit cyclostationarity are effective in suppressing interference when there is sufficient excess bandwidth [27]. When other-cell interference is
dispersive, treating interference as colored noise [28] is effective in suppressing interference. In addition, it is assumed that
there is one base station that provides most of the interference.
All of these assumptions can be met in practice for indoor microcellular environments.
Performance is evaluated under these assumptions, showing
significant gains over traditional reception. Performance is also
evaluated when these assumptions do not hold. Finally, the
approach is evaluated in a path diversity scenario, in which a
second desired signal image is obtained from the other-cell
base station (soft handoff) or from ones own base station
(multipath dispersion or transmit delay diversity). Note that
with transmit delay diversity, a second transmit antenna can

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transmit the base-station signal with a delay of one chip period,

so that the two transmitted signals are chip-synchronous.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, a system
model is given and the conventional correlation detector is
briefly reviewed. The proposed approach is developed in
Section III and extended to include equalization in Section IV.
Performance results are presented in Section V, and Section VI
concludes the paper.
II. PRELIMINARIES
A complex baseband signal model for one symbol period is
synused, as illustrated in Fig. 1. The base station transmits
chronous user signals. The th user signal
in time consymbol
that is spread with spreading
sists of a binary
and sent with energy
, giving
waveform
(1)
The spreading waveform consists of a user-specific Walsh sequence
, a common complex scrambling sequence
,
, so that
and a chip pulse shape
(2)
where is the length of the spreading sequence, also referred
to as the spreading factor, and
is the chip period. The comis assumed to have the form
plex scrambling sequence
, where
and
are modeled
. Chip
as independent sequences of random binary values
pulse shape
is assumed to be real root-Nyquist and normalized to have unity autocorrelation at zero lag. Without loss
is assumed to be the desired signal.
of generality,
The interfering base-station signal is modeled as a sum of
synchronous user signals that are chip-synchronous to the
desired signal. To ease notation and account for symbol-asynchronous signals, the binary modulation and Walsh spreading
, so that the th
code are combined into the real sequence
interfering signal can be expressed as
(3)
where
is the energy-per-symbol and
is the complex
scrambling sequence associated with the interfering signal. Like
,
has the form
, where
and
are independent, random binary sequences
.
consists of
own-cell signals,
The received signal
interfering users from another base station, and additive white
Gaussian noise
(complex, circular) with zero mean and
. This gives
one-sided power spectral density
(4)
where and are the complex channel coefficients associated
with the desired and interfering signals, respectively.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

Fig. 1. System model.

Conventional correlation detection for can be expressed as

a despreading operation followed by a thresholding operation.
The despread value is given by

A model for the sequence

by substituting (1)(4) into (6), giving

is obtained

(8)
where
(5)
where
(6)
can be first filtered by a filter
Thus, the received signal
matched to the chip pulse shape, yielding the received samples
. The detected bit value is given by
(7)
denotes taking the real part (
will denote
where
taking the imaginary part). The sign operation can be omitted to
obtain a soft bit value.
III. ML SOLUTION
An ML receiver is developed for the received sequence
, assuming knowledge of the channel
coefficients and , the desired signals spreading sequence
, and the interfering signals complex scrambling
. For this formulation, it is assumed that
,
sequence
so that there are no other in-cell (orthogonal) user signals. This
assumption is relaxed in the next section.

(9)
is a sequence of independent circularly symmetric
and
Gaussian random variables. Both real and imaginary compo.
nents have power
Observe that the interfering signal term consists of an unand a known complex component
known real component
. Similarly, the desired signal consists of a real compo. These components are
nent and a complex component
shown graphically in Fig. 2, which illustrates the complex plane
consisting of the real axis (in-phase, or component) and the
component). Intuitively, as
imaginary axis (quadrature, or
shown in the figure, the desired signal component can be projected to be orthogonal to the interference component, eliminating the interference.
The interference component is modeled as noncircular complex Gaussian noise that is independent from one sample to
is large, so that
the next. Such a model is reasonable when
is approximately Gaussian by the central limit theorem.
As thermal noise and interference are assumed to be independent on each sample, log-likelihood ratio (LLR) values from
different chip periods can simply be added to obtain a LLR for
bit .
As used in [3], the components of complex receive value
, denoted
and
, are used to form a real vector

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PROJECTION

893

Next, closed form expressions for the combining weights are

developed. Substituting (12) and (13) into (15), the overall noise
correlation matrix is given by
(18)
where, from (9)
(19)
(20)
Fig. 2. Signals in the complex I /Q plane.

. Throughout, complex quantities are

] or vectors
represented either as complex numbers [e.g.,
]. From (8), vector
has the
of two real values [e.g.,
form

The inverse overall noise correlation matrix is well defined as

long as the thermal noise power is nonzero.
The ML combining weights are obtained by substituting (11)
and (18) into (17), giving

(10)
(21)
where
(11)

where

(12)

(22)

(13)
and
The LLR for

.
given the vector

is given by

(14)
where the overall noise correlation matrix is given by
(15)
denotes expected value. Ignoring constant scaling
and
is symmetric, an
factors1 and using the property that
equivalent LLR is given by
(16)

corresponds to conventional reception

, which is optimal when only
). Also, (23), shown at the
thermal noise is present (i.e.,
bottom of the page, provides for interference suppression. In
provides the ZF solution, which can be shown by
fact,
by
.
left multiplying the interference component of
Thus, the overall solution can be interpreted as a combination
of the conventional solution and the ZF solution.
These results can alternatively be expressed using
complex quantities. Omitting the common scaling factor
, (16) becomes
(24)
where

where
(17)
is a vector of combining weights.
1Omitting common scaling factors has no impact on bit detection, and it
has no impact on decoder performance using soft information for certain decoders, such as a conventional ML sequence estimation decoder for convolutional codes.

(25)
(26)
(27)

(23)

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Fig. 3.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

I /Q projection receiver.

Detection is performed by summing log-likelihoods over the

chip periods, then taking the sign, giving the decision variable

interference suppression. The equalization approach is developed in the next section.

IV. EQUALIZATION

(28)
(29)
The ML solution can be related to the conventional solution by
substituting (25)(27) into (28), giving

(30)
where
(5) and

is the same as the conventional despread value

in

(31)
is a second, despread value that depends on both the desired
signals spreading sequence and on the interfering signals
scrambling sequence. Thus, the decision variable of the ML
solution can be formed using conventional despreading and a
second despreading operation, as illustrated in Fig. 3. The two
despread values are weighted, depending on the thermal noise
and interfering signal powers.
With the decision variable in (28), different chip values are
weighted differently. As a result, when other orthogonal users
, loss of orthogonality to these users ocare present
curs. Thus, one form of interference is suppressed but another
form is introduced.
The ML solution for this case is difficult to obtain, as the
orthogonality property is more apparent after despreading. Instead, a ZF equalization approach is used to preserve orthogonality between in-cell signals, at the expense of a reduction in

To preserve orthogonality between in-cell users, a chipdependent real scaling factor is introduced into the ZF term,
which is determined by analysis of the decision variable when
orthogonal users are present. This scaling factor is shown
to depend on the scrambling sequences of the desired and
interfering signals, as well as the relative angle between the
channel coefficients of the desired and interfering signals.
Because one of the two terms that forms the decision variable
has been changed, the relative weighting of the two terms
needs to be reoptimized. This relative weighting is optimized
to maximize the overall signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio
(SINR) of the decision variable. Finally, an adjustment factor
is introduced to optimize the soft information.
is introSpecifically, a chip-dependent scaling factor
term), as the conventional term
duced into the ZF term (
preserves orthogonality. Second, the conventional and
ZF components are weighted by real weights
and , which
are optimized for performance. Third, an overall adjustment
factor is introduced, which scales the decision variable properly for soft information generation. The resulting receiver, referred to as / projection, is given by

(32)
where
(33)

(34)

BOTTOMLEY: CDMA DOWNLINK INTERFERENCE SUPPRESSION USING /

PROJECTION

895

A. Scaling Factor
that preserves orthogonality,
To determine the value for
the ZF term from (32) is analyzed. For this analysis, it is convenient to express the ZF term as

(35)
This term is made to be zero when the received signal is an ar,
bitrary, orthogonal user. From (8), this implies
where
(36)
Substituting (36) for

into (35) gives

(37)

Fig. 4. Optimal relative weight versus relative angle for different

interference-to-noise ratios.

The optimal relative weighting

is shown in Fig. 4 as
a function of the relative angle . Observe that when equal), the conventional correlation
ization is not needed (
term is weighted less as the interference-to-noise ratio
increases. Also, observe as the angle between the desired
and interfering signals becomes small, the conventional term
is weighted more, turning off the interference suppression
component.

where
(38)
(39)
denotes the angle or phase in the complex plane
Note that
and
correspond to orof complex number . As
thogonal Walsh codes, the sum in (37) is zero when the term in
brackets is constant. Setting the term in brackets to unity gives
(40)
For a fixed , observe that
only two possible values, as

, as a function of
is either
or

, takes on
.

C. Adjustment Factor
As the resulting solution can no longer be interpreted in an
ML sense, a scaling factor is needed so that the soft decision
variable has properties similar to an LLR. Specifically, the soft
decision scalar variable should have the form
(44)
where
has variance SINR. From the expression for SINR
given by (70) of the Appendix, it is straightforward to show that
this is achieved by setting
(45)

B. Reoptimized Relative Weighting

The relative weighting factors
and
are chosen to
maximize the overall SINR. Without loss of generality, these
weighting factors are expressed in terms of a single variable
such that
(41)
(42)
varies between zero and one. Observe from (32) that
corresponds to the conventional correlation detector.
A detailed SINR analysis is given in the Appendix, which is
used to optimize . It is shown that SINR is maximized when
given by
where

(43)
where
is given in (60) of the Appendix. Observe that the
multiplies the noise power in (43), indicating how
term
equalization enhances the thermal noise.

Note that the numerator term in (45) is a common scaling factor

that may be omitted for certain decoders.
D. Summary
The / projection approach is summarized by (32), (40),
(41)(43), and (45). The structure in Fig. 3 still applies, except
that each correlator uses two accumulators, where values are
adaptively sent to the different accumulators based on the instantaneous values of the desired and interferers scrambling se. This allows scaling by
to be performed
quences
after accumulation of those terms that share the same
value. The correlation corresponding to the traditional correlator receiver is obtained by simply adding the two accumulator
values from the first correlator.
or
, equalization is
In the special case when is
, independent of chip index,
unnecessary. As a result,
and substituting (40), (41)(43), and (45) into (32) yields a result
within a positive scaling factor of (28).

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

V. PERFORMANCE
Performance is evaluated for the correlation receiver and the
/ projection receiver under both static (nonfading) and fading
channel conditions. For both receivers, the channel responses
and are assumed to be known. In practice, they would be
estimated using pilot channels.2
Analytical results are obtained using the SINR expression in
for the correlation receiver
(70) of the Appendix, where
[see (43)] for / projection. Modem bit-error-rate
and
(BER) results are obtained using the standard relationship between signal-to-noise ratio and BER for BPSK modulation [29]
(46)
Semianalytical results are obtained for fading channels by averaging (46) for 10 000 fading realizations using Monte Carlo
simulation.
Link simulation is used to verify the analytical results and to
provide frame-erasure rate (FER) results based on one of the
coding options used in TIA/EIA-95-B [1]. For each frame, a
block of 184 information bits plus eight tail bits are encoded
convolutional code with constraint length nine,
using a rate
producing a 384-bit frame. Pseudorandom puncturing of 1 out
of 12 bits is performed for power control signaling purposes, so
. Thus, the energy-per-inforthat the effective code rate is
. Each coded
mation-bit ( in [30]) for user is
symbol (modem bit) is spread using a spreading factor of 64.
At the receiver, ideal error detection is assumed, so that a frame
is erased if any of the information bits is in error. In practice,
there is a cyclic redundancy code which is used to detect errors.
As TIA/EIA-95-B has a 1% FER operating point, results that
include this operating point are provided.
For both static and fading channel cases, 10 000 frames of
384 bits each were generated. For the fading channel cases, these
10 000 frames were generated using 200 independent realizations of 50 frames each, assuming a Doppler spread of 7 Hz
and the classic Jakes spectrum. The TIA/EIA-95-B chip rate of
1.2288 Mchips/s was assumed.
Unless otherwise indicated, two base-station signals are simand
ulated assuming 33 equal-power user signals (
).3 The desired base-station signal includes the user
of interest. The interfering base-station signal was simulated
using a sufficiently delayed version of the desired base stations
signal. The ratio of average powers of the two base stations is de(
using
noted as the carrier-to-interference ratio
the notation in [30]). In general, typical values for
depend
on whether a system employs soft handoff and how soft handoff
is implemented. To provide general results, a wide range of
values are examined.
2The traditional receiver would estimate only c, whereas, the proposed approach would require estimation of d as well. The accuracy of these coefficient
estimates would depend on the pilot channel strengths as well as how fast the
channel was changing (Doppler spread).
3Downlink power control was not simulated. However, experience indicates
that with power control, performance is more often interference limited, so that
gains from interference suppression increase.

Fig. 5. Gain of I /Q projection versus relative angle for different

interference-to-noise ratios.

Fig. 6. Modem BER versus E =N , static channel, C=I

= 0 dB.

A. Static Channel
For the static channel case, we first examine the SINR gain of
/ projection relative to conventional correlation using the analytical expressions. From these expressions, the SINR gain depends on the relative angle between the desired and interfering
and the interference power
relative to the noise
signals
power
. Analytical results are given in Fig. 5, where only
results for the first octant are shown, due to octant symmetry.
Observe that the gain is maximized when the desired and interfering signals are 45 apart, which provides maximum separation between the two signals. Also, the gain increases the larger
the interference power is, relative to the noise power.
In Fig. 6, modem BER results for correlation and / pro. For these
jection receivers are shown as a function of
results, the two base stations have equal power (
dB),
which is a worst case scenario. Both analytical (markers) and
link simulation (lines) results are shown.
For / projection, results for a fixed best case relative angle
of 45 are given, indicating the best possible performance.
In addition, modem BER averaged over uniformly distributed
relative angles is also given. As the correlation receiver performance is independent of relative angle, only the random angle
result is shown.
Observe that the conventional correlation receiver has a high
error floor, due to interference from the interfering base station.
The / projection receiver is able to suppress that interference, providing significantly improved performance. Also observe that there is good agreement between the analytical and
simulation results.

BOTTOMLEY: CDMA DOWNLINK INTERFERENCE SUPPRESSION USING /

Fig. 7. FER versus E

=N

, static channel, C=I

PROJECTION

= 0 dB.

Fig. 8. Modem BER versus C=I , Rayleigh-fading channel, E

one or two interfering base-station signals.

Fig. 9. FER versus C=I , Rayleigh-fading channel, E

two interfering base-station signals.

=N = 21 dB,

897

=N = 21 dB, one or

fering signals with different time shifts, whose strength depends

on the responses of the transmit and receive filters. To be consistent with the root-Nyquist assumptions used throughout, a
root-raised-cosine pulse shape with rolloff of 0.5 was considered. / projection was applied by treating the strongest interfering signal image as interference and the other images as
noise. This should reduce the gain of / projection.
For the case of one interfering base-station signal, the gain
with no misalignment is 7 dB, as mentioned earlier. With
and
chip misalignment, the gain reduces to 2.5 and 0.4 dB,
respectively. Thus, the gain in performance is sensitive to the
relative alignment of the two signals.
C. Rayleigh Fading and Path Diversity

Corresponding FER results, based on link simulation, are

shown in Fig. 7. Observe that at 1% FER, / projection
provides gains between 0.5 and 1.7 dB.
B. Rayleigh Fading
For the Rayleigh-fading channel case, modem BER and FER
results for correlation and / projection receivers are shown
in Figs. 8 and 9, respectively. Results are given for the cases of
one interfering base station and two interfering base stations (
is split evenly). For the correlation receiver, the results for these
two cases are almost identical, so only the case of one interfering
base station is shown. For the case of two interfering base-station signals, the / projection approach is applied, treating the
stronger of the two signals (instantaneously, as a function of the
fading) as interference and the other as noise. Performance is
for a fixed
of 21 dB. Note
plotted as a function of
that with fading, the relative angle is inherently randomized.
Observe that / projection provides large performance
gains when there is a single interfering base station. From
Fig. 9, the gain at 1% FER for this case is around 7 dB. For
the case of two interfering base stations, the gain is reduced to
1.4 dB.
In Fig. 8, both semianalytical (markers) and link simulation
(lines) results are shown for the case of one interfering base
station. Observe that there is good agreement between these
results.
When the two base-station signals are not chip-aligned, the
interfering base-station signal can be modeled as many inter-

Performance was also evaluated for the case of one base station and a two-ray chip-spaced channel. This is equivalent to
transmit delay diversity in a nondispersive channel, in which a
second antenna is used to transmit the base-station signal delayed by one chip period. At the receiver, there are two copies
of the base-station signal, fading independently in the presence
is either split evenly between the
of thermal noise. Energy
two rays (the ratio of the second ray power to the first ray power
is 0 dB) or unevenly (the ratio of ray powers is 6 dB).
The correlation receiver was replaced by the traditional, coherent RAKE receiver [29], in which the despread value for each
signal image is weighted by the conjugate of the corresponding
channel coefficient, then added to form the decision variable.
is replaced by
, where subscripts
Thus, in (7),
zero and one denote different signal images. For / projection,
the approach was applied separately to each signal image, and
the results were then added.
Performance results for both RAKE and / projection are
given in Fig. 10. FER is plotted as a function of the fraction of
the total base-station power given to the desired user (related to
in [30]). Note that in this case, there are still 33 users,
but the desired users power differs from the power level used
for
by the other 32 users. To maintain a fixed noise level,
the other 32 users is fixed at 21 dB.
Observe the gains in performance using the / projection
approach. At 1% FER, the gain of / projection over RAKE
reception for the cases of even and uneven rays is 2.7 and 2.4 dB,
respectively.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

APPENDIX
In this Appendix, the SINR of / projection with equalization is determined as a function of a parameter . By differentiating with respect to and setting the result to zero, the optimal
value for is determined. It is straightforward to show that the
second derivative is negative, so that the result maximizes SINR.
The decision variable is given in (32), and the overall positive scaling factor may be omitted without loss in generality.
Substituting (33), (34), and (40) into (32), the decision variable
can be expressed as
(47)
Fig. 10. FER versus fraction of base-station power given to the desired signal,
two-ray, chip-spaced Rayleigh-fading channel (second ray with relative power
of 0 dB or 6 dB), E=N = 21 dB.

The fact that the two signal images employ the same scrambling sequence is not essential to either RAKE or / projection
performance. Thus, if the two signal images employ different
scrambling sequences, which corresponds to a soft handoff situation, the performance gains would be the same.
VI. CONCLUSION
In the downlink of a DS-CDMA system, interference can be
suppressed in the complex / plane using partial knowledge
of the spreading codes that form the interference. Specifically,
knowledge of a common complex scrambling mask can be used
to project the desired signal away from interfering signals in the
complex plane. To preserve orthogonality with own base-station
signals, ZF equalization can be used, at the expense of decreased
interference suppression.
When there are multiple interfering signals, the / projection approach can be applied to the strongest interfering signal,
treating the rest as noise. Though not explored here, this approach can be refined by selecting which signal to treat as interference based on output SINR, which depends on both signal
strength and phase, relative to the desired signal.
While developed for chip-aligned interference from another
base station, the technique can be applied to misaligned interference, treating it as multiple interfering signals, based on the
ringing of the pulse shape. It can also be applied to the multipath
dispersion, transmit delay diversity, and soft handoff scenarios,
in which the / projection approach is applied to each signal
image separately, treating the other images as interference.
For future research, it would be interesting to formulate the
ML solution for the case of chip-asynchronous interference.
This is a challenging problem, as this introduces interference
correlation between successive chips. It would also be interesting to formulate the ML solution for the case of dispersive
signals.

where

(48)
Substituting the model (8) into (47), the power of the signal,
noise, and interference components of can be determined to
give an overall SINR for of the form
(49)
Each term in (49) is determined separately.
1) Signal Term: Substituting
and (48) into (47), the signal component of is
shown in (50), at the bottom of the page. Substituting the fact
in (50) gives
that

(51)
and
are defined in (38) and (39), respecwhere
is the reciprocal of
tively. Observe, from (40), that
, so that (51) further simplifies to
(52)
Thus, the signal power in

is given by
(53)

and
(54)

(50)

BOTTOMLEY: CDMA DOWNLINK INTERFERENCE SUPPRESSION USING /

2) Thermal Noise Term: Substituting

(47), the thermal noise component of is given by

PROJECTION

into

899

where
(64)

(55)

(65)
(66)

. The statistical properties of

are the same as
. Thus, the real and imaginary parts
are uncorrelated, and the sequence of samples are assumed
uncorrelated as well. As a result, the thermal noise power in
can be expressed as

The product sequence

can be viewed as a random
sequence of real values with power , corresponding to the interference power. Thus, the interference power is given by

where

(67)
(56)
where is the power in the real or imaginary part of
.
For further simplification, we assume that is nonzero and
use the fact that

The possible values for

are
, and . Assuming
is large enough so that these occur roughly equally often, then

(68)

(57)
and
. Substituting (48) into (57) and using steps
similar to the signal power analysis gives

Taking the derivative with respect to

(69)

(58)

4) Overall SINR and Optimal Parameter Value: Substituting

(53), (59), and (68) into (49), the overall SINR is given by

is
, there are two possible values for
.
Since
is
for
of the chips and
for the other
Assuming
chips, which is reasonable for large , (56) using (58) gives
(59)

(70)
The optimal setting for , denoted , is obtained by differentiating the SINR expression in (70) with respect to and setting
it equal to zero, i.e.,

where
(60)
(71)

Taking the derivative with respect to

(61)

Substituting (54), (61), and (69) in (71) and evaluating for

gives

3) Interference Term: The interference component of is

into (47). Using
obtained by substituting
the fact that
, (47) becomes
(62)
Note that, as expected, the interference is cancelled in the ZF
term, leaving only interference from the conventional correlation term.
Expressing channel coefficients and scrambling code values
in terms of amplitudes and phase angles, (62) becomes
(63)

(72)
The resulting SINR can be obtained by substituting (72) in
(70). SINR for the conventional correlation receiver is obtained
.
by evaluating (70) using
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank R. Ramsh and E. Sourour
for the help in developing the link simulation tool used, as
well as H. Arslan and H. Koorapathy for providing key references. The author also gratefully acknowledges H. Arslan,
A. S. Khayrallah, Y.-P. E. Wang, K. Zangi, the anonymous
reviewers, and the editor of this paper for providing helpful
comments and suggestions.

900

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

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Gregory E. Bottomley (S81-M85-SM99)

received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
Blacksburg, in 1983 and 1985, respectively, and the
Ph.D. degree from North Carolina State University,
Raleigh, in 1989, all in electrical engineering.
From 1985 to 1987, he was with AT&T Bell
Laboratories, Whippany, NJ, working in the area
of sonar signal processing. In 1990, he was a
Visiting Lecturer at North Carolina State University,
Raleigh. Since 1991, he has been with Ericsson
Inc., Research Triangle Park, NC, where he is currently a member of Ericsson
Research at Research Triangle Park. His research interests are in baseband
signal processing for mobile communications, including equalization, RAKE
reception, and interference cancellation.
Dr. Bottomley is a member of Sigma Xi. From 1997 to 2000, he served as an
Associate Editor and currently serves as Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY.