Performance Comparison of

Successive Interference Cancellation

and
Parallel Interference Cancellation

Elmustafa Erwa
EE 381V: Fall ‘03
Jeffery Andrews
Dec. 9, 2003
ABSTRACT

In DS/CDMA systems, overcoming near/far effects and fading is imperative for

satisfactory performance. One way to combat the near/far effect is to use stringent
power control, as is done in most of the commercial systems. Another approach is
multiuser detection (MUD). In addition to mitigating the near/far effect, MUD has
the more fundamental potential of raising capacity by canceling MAI. This paper
compares the performance of two famous, but suboptimal, MUD schemes known as
successive interference cancellation (SIC) and parallel interference cancellation.
The comparison is done analytically and through simulations, using matlab.

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INTRODUCTION

Code division Multiple Access (CDMA) has emerged as the technology of choice for the
wireless industry because it provides a number of attractive features over the other
multiple access schemes – Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and Frequency
Division Multiple Access (FDMA) – to meet the high capacity and other performance
requirements for the emerging personal communication services (PCS). Some of these
features are spectrum sharing, rejection of multipath signal components or utilizing them
for recombining [1], and having a frequency reuse factor of one, in the cellular case.
However, the capacity of CDMA systems employing the conventional matched filter
detector at the receiver end is often limited by interference due to other users in the
system, known as multiple-access interference (MAI). MAI is introduced in CDMA
systems due to the inability to maintain complete orthogonality of users’ signature
sequences over the hostile wireless communication channels.

In a mobile radio scenario, the transmitters move in relation to the receiver causing the
received signal to have unequal energies. In this situation, the conventional matched
filter detector fails to demodulate weak signals, even when the cross-correlation between
the signals is relatively low. This problem is known as the near/far effect.

One way to combat the near/far effect is to use stringent power control, shown in [2], as
is done in most of the commercial systems. Another approach is multiuser detection
(MUD). In addition to mitigating the near/far effect, MUD has the more fundamental
potential of raising capacity by canceling MAI.

In this paper, I will compare the performance of two famous, but suboptimal, MUD
schemes known as successive interference cancellation (SIC) and parallel interference
cancellation. The comparison will be done analytically and through simulations, using
matlab. Before indulging myself in the analytical details of these two suboptimal
schemes, I will first discuss briefly the other MUD schemes, mainly the optimum
multiuser detector and the linear multiuser detectors.

MULTIUSER DETECTION

Conventional CDMA systems independently detect each user in parallel using a matched
filter which consists of the unique spreading code used by that user. These spreading
codes are designed such that different ones are highly uncorrelated in order to suppress
other users’ signals and treat it as simple additive white noise. This approach proves to
be very suboptimal since these interfering signals need not be treated as random noise.
Instead, the information in these interfering signals can be used to enhance the desired
user’s signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), thereby raising the capacity of the system. Multiuser
detectors attempt to do exactly that, i.e. detect interfering signals and cancel them out
from the desired user’s signal [3].

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Optimum Multiuser Detection
The matched filter detector, described above, was believed to be the optimum detector
until proved otherwise by Verdu in the early 1980’s. His optimum solution jointly
maximizes the likelihood functions for K users by choosing the bits {b1, b2, …, bK} that
minimizes the mean square error (MSE) between the estimated received signal and the
actual composite received signal, which is the sum of the received signals for all K users
plus noise. It has been shown that the complexity of the optimum detector is O(2K),
which increases exponentially with the number of users. In addition to complexity, the
optimum detector requires a priori knowledge of the amplitudes of all K users, which is
typically not available to the receiver. Although, the optimum detector has been shown
to dramatically increase the capacity of the system, its complexity deems it infeasible to
implement in the real world [3].

The work by Verdu gave hope that the capacity can ultimately increase using suboptimal
multiuser detectors that balance between the two extreme cases of using the optimal
detector or the matched filter detector. Hence, some linear multiuser detectors were
proposed to accomplish that goal.

Linear Multiuser Detection

Linear multiuser detectors attempt to attain as much of the capacity increase as the
optimum detector while reducing the complexity of the system such that it can be
implemented. They are simply linear filters that attempt to suppress MAI. In these
detectors, a linear mapping (transformation) is applied to the soft outputs of the
conventional detector to produce a better set of outputs to provide better performance.
The two popular linear multiuser detectors are the decorrelating detector [4-6] and the
minimum mean square error (MMSE) detector [7, 8]. They are highly analogous to the
zero-forcing and MMSE equalizers used to combat inter-symbol interference (ISI) in a
single- user channel [1].

The decorrelating detector attempts to completely eliminate all MAI while the MMSE
detector tries to minimize the square of the residual noise plus interference. Therefore,
the decorrelating detector is a special case of the MMSE detector, where the noise is zero.
The decorrelating detector has the same noise enhancement problem as the zero-forcing
equalizer. It is also undefined when there are more users simultaneously using the
channel than spreading chip per information bit, since it is impossible to drive the
interference noise to zero in this situation [3]. The MMSE, on the other hand, requires
accurate channel and user information, as does the optimum detector. Along with the
channel and user knowledge, the MMSE requires a KxK matrix inversion which becomes
extremely complex to evaluate as K increases.

Figures 1 and 2 below show the performance comparison of the optimum detector and
linear MUD to the conventional matched filter. The show the Shanon capacities as a
function of the number of users K divided by the spreading factor N and the energy per
bit Eb divided by the noise spectral density N0, respectively.

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 Figure 1: Spectral Efficiency vs. System Loading at Eb/N0 = 10 dB [3]

Figure 2: Large K Spectral Efficiencies with optimum K/N [3]

Other multiuser detection techniques include non-linear MUD, such as the decision-
feedback (DF) multiuser detector and the turbo multiuser detector, and interference
cancellation (IC) MUD. The next two sections will analyze the two different IC schemes,
SIC and PIC, respectively in more detail. Following that will be a performance
comparison of the two schemes.

5
SIC SCHEME

In the analysis of both schemes, I will consider a simple BPSK system where the received
signal can be written as:
K
r (t ) = ∑ Ak ⋅ a k (t − τ k ) ⋅ bk (t − τ k ) ⋅ cos(ω c t + φ k ) + n(t ) (1)
k =1
where r(t) is the received signal, K is the total number of users. Ak, bk(t), and ak(t) are the
amplitude, bit sequence, and spreading chip sequence of user k respectively. The bit rate
Rb is the inverse of the bit period T and the chip rate Rc is the inverse of the chip period
Tc. The spreading gain is N = T / Tc .τ k and φk are the time delay and phase estimates of
user k, which are assumed to be accurate.

Furthermore, the bits and chips are assumed to be rectangular with i.i.d random values of
± 1 that occur with probability 0.5. Theτ k and φk are assumed to be i.i.d. uniform
random variables in [0, T] and [0, 2π].

SIC operates simply by subtracting off the contributions of MAI with the order of
subtractions given by the relative strength of the users. The Strongest signal is cancelled
out first followed by the second strongest, etc. This could be done by ranking the signal
strengths, which is obtained by separate channel estimates or directly from the
conventional detector. The successive cancellations are carried as follows [9]:
i) Recognize the strongest signal (one with maximum correlation value).
ii) Decode the strongest user.
iii) Estimate the amplitude of the decoded user from the output of the correlator.
iv) Regenerate the strongest users’ signal using its chip sequence and the estimate
of its amplitude.
v) Cancel the strongest user.
vi) Repeat (until all users are decoded or a permissible number of cancellations
are achieved).

Figure 3, below, shows the block diagram for the SIC receiver. Each user’s signal is
detected by using the conventional matched filter. Then the strongest user is determined
by using a selector. At the output of the low-pass filter (LPF) of the I-Channel, we get:
d I (t ) = LPF {r (t ) cos(wc t )}
K
cos(φ k ) nc (t ) (2)
= ∑ Ak ⋅ a k (t − τ k ) ⋅ bk (t − τ k ) ⋅ +
k =1 2 2
where nc(t) is the in-phase component of the low-pass filtered Gaussian noise n(t). dQ(t) is
obtained in a similar way. Also, the cross correlation term between user k and user i is
given by:
1 T 
I k ,i (τ k ,i , φ k ,i ) =  ∫ a k (t − τ k ,i ) ⋅ a i (t )dt  cos(φ k − φ i )bk (t − τ k ) (3)
T 0 

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 Figure 3: SIC Receiver Block Diagram [13]

Hence we can express the (j+1)st decision variable in the I-Channel as:
T

Zˆ Ij+1 = ∫ d I (t )a j +1 (t − τ j +1 ) ⋅ cos(φ j +1 )dt

0
(4)
K
1 1 1
= n Ij +1 + A j +1b j +1 cos 2 (φ j +1 ) + ∑ Ak I k , j +1 (τ k , j +1 ) cos(φ k ) cos(φ j +1 )
2 2 k = j +2 2
T
1
T ∫0
where, n Ij +1 = nc (t )a j +1 (t − τ j +1 ) cos(φ j +1 )dt . Similarly, we Zˆ Qj+1 is obtained as:

1 1
Zˆ Qj+1 = n Qj+1 + A j +1b j +1 sin 2 (φ j +1 )
2 2
K (5)
1
+ ∑ Ak I k , j +1 (τ k , j +1 ) sin(φ k ) sin(φ j +1 )
k = j +2 2

After j cancellations, the decision variable for the (j+1)st user is given by:
1 1
Zˆ j +1 = Zˆ Ij+1 + Z Qj+1 = A j +1b j +1 + C j +1 (6)
2 2
and Cj+1 is given by:
K j
C j +1 = ∑ Ak I k , j +1 (τ k , j +1 , φk , j +1 ) + (n Ij +1 + n Qj+1 ) − ∑ Ci I i ,i +1 (τ i ,i +1 , φi,i +1 )
k = j +2 i =1
(7)

In the above expression, the first term is the multiple access interference of the
uncancelled users, the second term is due to the Gaussian noise, and the third term is due
to the cumulative noise from imperfect cancellation. The variance of Cj+1 conditioned on
the ordered set of amplitudes Ak is defined as follows:
η j +1 = Var C j +1 | Ak [ ]
[ ]
K
= ∑A
k= j+2
2
k ⋅ Var I k , j +1 (τ k , j +1 , φ k , j +1 ) (8)

[( )]
j
+ Var n Ij +1 + n Qj+1 − ∑η i ⋅ Var[ I i ,i +1 (τ i ,i +1 , φ i ,i +1 )]
i =1

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Using results given in [] for asynchronous systems, the above expression yields:
1 K N0 1 j
η j +1 = ∑ k T 3N ∑i η i
3N k = j + 2
A 2
+ + (9)

and the SNR conditioned on Ak is then given by:

A 2j +1
γ j +1 = K j (10)
1 N 1
3N
∑
k = j+2
A + 0 +
2
k
T 3N
∑η
i
i

If we assume that noise Cj+1 is Gaussian with zero mean and variance ηj+1, the bit error
probability (BER) after the jth cancellation, conditioned on the amplitudes Ak, is the given
by:
{ }
Pe j +1 = P Zˆ j +1 < 0 | b j +1=1 = P{C j +1 < − A j +1 }
 A j +1 
( )
(11)
= Q =Q γ
 η  j +1
 j +1 

Since equations (9), (10), and (11), were conditioned on Ak, which are the ordered set of
amplitudes of K users, the analysis of the BER performance of the SIC scheme were done
using order statistics as in []. The pdf’s of the ordered Ak is denoted by f Ak (x ) and is
obtained as follows:
F K − k ( x)[1 − F ( x )] f ( x )
K! k −1
f Ak ( x ) = (12)
(K − k )!(k − 1)!
where, f ( x ) = 2 xe − x and F ( x ) = 1 − e − x are the pdf and cdf of the Rayleigh fading
2 2

amplitudes Ak, respectively.

The BER expression after the jth cancellation is then unconditioned using the pdf of the
(j+1)st strongest amplitude as follows:
∞  
A j +1
Pˆe j +1 = ∫ Q  f ( x)dx
[ ]
(13)
 E η  A j +1
0  Ak j +1 
The average probability of error is then obtained as the average of the BER resulting
from all stages of cancellation.

PIC SCHEME

In this section we will analyze the second interference cancellation scheme known as
parallel interference cancellation (PIC). Unlike SIC, where interfering users are decoded
and cancelled successively, for a desired user, all the other interfering users are
collectively cancelled from the received signal. Figure 4 shows a block diagram of the
PIC receiver.

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 Figure 4: PIC Receiver Block Diagram [13]

As in the case of SIC, PIC uses the matched filter detector to detect all of the signals. The
decision variables Zi, as seen in figure 4, are the decision variables used for decoding by
the conventional receiver. These decision variables are then used to regenerate the user
signals and cancel it from the received signal to isolate the user of interest. The modified
received signals are once again fed through the matched filter of the user of interest and
another set of decision variables Ẑ i is obtained. This process forms the first stage of
parallel-cancellation. Multiple stages can be performed to increase the performance of the
system as shown in figure 5.

Figure 5: Cascade of Parallel cancellers [13]

The analysis of the PIC scheme is a lot more difficult and complicated than the SIC
scheme. It becomes even more complicated as the number of stages increase. The
received signal at baseband is given by:
K
1 1
r (t ) = ∑ Ak ⋅ a k (t − τ k ) ⋅ bk (t − τ k ) ⋅ e jφk + n z (t ) (14)
k =1 2 2
The Zi represents the decision variable for the ith user at the output of the conventional
detector and is given by:

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  1 τ i +T 
Z i = Re  ∫ r (t )a i (t − τ i )e − jφi dt 
T τ i 
K
(15)
1 1 1
= Ai bi + ∑ Ak I k ,i + N i
2 k =1 2 2
k ≠i

These decision variables are then used to regenerate the user signals, which are cancelled
from the received signal to form a modified received signal. The modified received signal
becomes:
K
ri(1) (t ) = r (t ) − ∑ Z m ⋅ a m (t − τ m )e jφmk
m =1
m ≠i

1 1
= Ai ⋅ a i (t − τ i ) ⋅ bi (t − τ i ) ⋅ e jφi + n z (t )
2 2
K K
1 (16)
− ∑ ∑ Ak ⋅ I k ,m ⋅ a m (t − τ m )e jφmk
m =1 k =1 2
m ≠i k ≠ m
K
1
− ∑ N i ⋅ a m (t − τ m )e jφmk
m =1 2
m ≠i

The decision variable for the first stage for the ith user now becomes:
 1 τ i +T (1) 
Z i = Re  ∫ ri (t )a i (t − τ i )e − jφi dt 
ˆ
T τ i 
K K K
(17)
1 1 1
= Ai bi + ∑ ∑ Ak I k ,m I i ,m − ∑ N i I i ,m
2 m =1 k =1 2 m =1 2
m ≠i k ≠ m m≠ i

This completes the first stage cancellation. To cascade one more stage of cancellation, the
new decision variables obtained above are used in the same manner as before to
regenerate a more accurate version of the user signals, which are then cancelled from the
received signal. This process can be repeated for s stages to obtain better results. Further
analysis of the decision variables become very difficult and very complicated to follow.
Hence, I will use the closed form of the average BER performance that was derived by A.
Kaul and B.D. Woerner in []. The BER can be expressed as:
   K −1 s   
−1 / 2
  K
 
s  ∑ Pk 
  1−      

Pb(ks) = Q
1   3N  
+
1  ( K −1) s
− (−1)  k =1  + (−1)  
s
  
   K −1  (3N )   Pk    (18)
 2 Ebk
s
K 
 1−      
  N0    3N       
   

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COMPARISON RESULTS

BER/Capacity Performance Comparison

Using the average BER probabilities derived in the last two sections, I was able to do
matlab simulations to compare the two schemes. Figure 6 below shows the average BER
as a function of the number of active users in the system under ideal power control, i.e.
P1 = P1 = ... = PK . In this case it was clear that PIC outperformed SIC especially in the
case of having two stages of parallel cancellations, while both SIC and PIC proved
superior to the conventional matched filter detector.

For the fading channel (Rayleigh fading), however, SIC had a better performance than
both single-stage and 2-stage PIC, as shown in figure 7. This results from the prominent
power variability among all users over the fading channel as opposed to the situation of
perfect power control. Therefore, selecting and decoding the user signals in descending
order, enables SIC to use the differing strengths of the signals to its advantage. Hence,
from the analytical results and simulation results we see that SIC has an overall
advantage with respect to BER performance over PIC because in wireless applications,
fading channels are more realistic than the ideal power control AWGN channel.

Figure 6: BER vs. Number of Users for AWGN Channel

(Eb/N0 = 8 and N = 31)

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Complexity Comparison
With respect to complexity, SIC appears to be simpler, and requires less hardware than
PIC. It is worth noting that more stages of parallel cancellation improves the BER
performance where it almost achieves the same results as SIC (maybe better with more
stages), as seen in figure 7, but at the expense of exxessive hardware complexity and
processing delay.

Figure 7: BER vs. Number of Users for Fading Channel

(avg Eb/N0 = 8 and N = 31)

Processing Delay
Processing delay presents the biggest drawback to SIC, since only a single user bit is
decoded at each stage and thus, it takes at least K bit-times to decode all users for each
bit. In the case of PIC, it takes s bit-times, where, s is the number of stages, to decode all
users for each bit. This is a clear advantage for PIC since s is usually a lot less than K.

CONCLUSION

From the comparison results, it is clear that both successive and parallel interference
cancellation schemes have better performance than the conventional detector, and at the
same time, they are simpler and less complex than the optimum detector. While SIC
appears to be more resistant to fading than PIC, and achieves better results with regard to
BER and capacity performance, it suffers mightily from a high processing delay. This
proves to be major in applications that are less tolerant to high delays, such as cellular

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systems. One way to deal with stringent delay requirement is to limit the number of
cancellations. A groupwise SIC (GSIC) has been proposed in [] to deal with delay
constraints. However, it is obvious that the performance will be degraded. Due to the
lack of time, I was not able to investigate GSIC and compare it to PIC and SIC. This
could be left for some future work.

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