Timing-free blind multiuser detection in differentially encoded DS/CDMA systems

A timing-free blind multiuser detection technique is proposed for differentially encoded direct-sequence/code division multiple access (DS/CDMA) networks. Unlike previously derived blind multiuser detectors, the proposed algorithm does not rely on any information beyond the spreading code of the desired user, namely neither the complex amplitude nor the symbol timing of the signal of interest is assumed to be known to the receiver. The proposed detector structure is immune to cochannel interferers with arbitrarily large powers, and, as computer simulation results show, compares favorably with competing alternatives. Moreover, the proposed detector achieves performance quite close to that of the ideal minimum mean square error (MMSE) multiuser receiver, which requires knowledge of the spreading codes, timing offsets, and received energies for the signals of all active users.