Joint ZF and Partial ML Detection for Multi Cellular Network Environment

In this paper, we discuss joint detection schemes for an uplink cellular system when Base Station (BS) cooperation is possible for multi-cell users in a multi-cell scenario. Further, we analyze and evaluate the ML, ZF and ZF based SIC detection schemes. Although ML attains optimal performance, its complexity increases exponentially. Further, although ZF is simple, but exhibits the poor performance and SIC may give rise to error propagation. We propose a novel detection scheme, which combines the ZF detection and partial ML decoding scheme in order to improve the detection performance as well as to decrease the decoder complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme attains nearly 2 dB reduction in the required SNR values to achieve the same BER performance. Further, the proposed scheme can be applied to MIMO detection for a single user and extended to other types of multi-user and multi-antenna based future smart BS cooperation.