Performance bounds for optimum multiuser DS-CDMA systems

In this letter we estimate the bit error probability (BEP) of optimum multiuser detection for synchronous and asynchronous code division multiple access (CDMA) systems on Gaussian and fading channels. We first compute an upper bound and a lower bound on the bit error probability for a given spreading code, then average the bounds over a few thousand sets of spreading codes. These bounds are obtained from a partial distance spectrum. On Gaussian channels, the upper bound converges to the lower bound at moderate to large signal-to-noise ratios. However, on fading channels the upper bound does not converge, hence we present our results for the lower bound only. The numerical results show that: 1) the BEP of a 31-user CDMA system with binary random spreading codes of length 31 is only two to four times higher than the BEP of the single user system; 2) the number of users that can be accommodated in an asynchronous CDMA system is larger than the processing gain; and 3) optimum multiuser detection outperforms linear detection (e.g., the decorrelating detector) by about 2.8 to 5.7 dB.