ADAPTIVE BEAMFORMING FOR DS-CDMA USING CONJUGATE GRADIENT ALGORITHM IN A MULTIPATH FADING CHANNEL

Nermin A. Mohamed. James G. Dunham Department of Electrical Engineering Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275 PH: 214-768-3112 FAX:214-768-3573 e-mail: nermin @ seas.smu.edu, jgd @seas.smu.edu
Abstract - An antenna array-based base station receiver for wireless DS-CDMA with Conjugate Gradient (CG) adaptation in a multipath fading channel is studied. In order to construct a beamformer-RAKE receiver, the existing code-filtering approach is used for each resolvable multipath component of the desired user: however, with another way to determine the optimum antenna weights. Thus, the desired user's signal is enhanced and the co-channel interference from other directions is reduced. The average uncoded Bit Error Rate (BER) as a function of the average antenna Signalto-Noise Ratio (SNR) and the number of receiving antennas is examined in a frequency selective Rayleigh fading channel. Simulation results show an increase in system capacity proportional to the number of antennas.

I.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the growing demand for mobile communication systems, in particular cellular systems, has lead to ways of increasing the channel capacity within the allocated spectrum to these services while maintaining satisfactory performance. One approach for increased spectrum efficiency in digital cellular is the use of Direct Sequence-Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) technology [ 11. Another promising approach that is applicable to the DS-CDMA systems is the use of spatial processing with cell site adaptive antenna arrays. Beamforming and adaptive antenna arrays are very efficient capacity enhancement techniques [3-81. They have been proposed to reduce multipath fading of the desired signal and to suppress the co-channel interference. A new space-time processing framework for adaptive beamfonning with antenna arrays in CDMA was proposed by A. Naguib [8]. This system uses code-filtering approach in each receiving antenna to estimate both the channel vector and the optimum beamformer weights.

In our work, we assume perfect estimation of the channel parameters (direction; delay; and power) for the desired user [2]. We use the Conjugate Gradient (CG) adaptation algorithm to find the optimum beamformer weights [lo, 111. CG adaptation has two main characteristics. First, it can produce a solution of the matrix equation very efficiently and converge in a finite number of iterations (the number of the unknown weights). This is very important if the array is to operate in a mobile system in which a high speed of convergence is required. Second, the convergence is guaranteed for any possible condition of the signal matrix. Note that, unlike other adaptive algorithms, the number of weights is less than the number of sensors0.5 x (1 + number of sensors) [ 10, 113. The resolvable paths' directions are fed to the CG beamformer to cancel out the co-channel interference from other directions. The RAKE fingers are then coherently combined to form a decision statistic for the desired user [7]. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section two describes the system. In section three, we review the CG adaptive algorithm. Simulation results will be presented in section four. Finally, section five summarizes the paper.

1 1 .

SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

We assume that the base station uses an antenna array of P sensors and N weights, where P = 2N - 1, to receive signals from mobiles. Let K be the number of users in the cell. For simplicity, we assume that the mobile uses BPSK modulation, however, any modulation format can be used. Additionally, assume a slow fading L-paths channel (the channel random parameters do not change within the symbol time interval) with correlated coefficient generated by Jake's model [9]. The received signal at the p'* antenna elemeni can be shown to be

0-7803-5554-7/99/$10.00 Q IEEE.

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,=I
1-1

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where p = -(N - I ) , - . - , ( N - 1); c , ( t ) E {l,- l} is the (square pulse) Pseudo Noise (PN) chips of the ilh mobile with a chip period of T,; P I is the average transmitted ~ is the ' i mobile mobile power; b , ( r ){I,-]} information bit sequence with a bit period of T = GT, where G is the processing gain; T , , is the Irh path time delay for the i* mobile channel; @,,, IS the Direction of Arrival (DoA) of the lrh path of the ith mobile signal measured from the array broadside and a,,, is the complex Gaussian fading channel coefficient from the lrh path of the " i mobile to the antenna array; d is the distance between the antenna elements (d = U2 for no grating lobes); and finally n(t) is the thermal white Gaussian noise. Without loss of generality, assume the desired user is the first one. Then, Eq. (1) can be put in the following form
L

It is well known that an array of N weights has N-1 degree of freedom [ 1I]. This means that with an array of N weights, one can generates N-1 pattern nulls and a beam maximum in arbitrary directions. From Eq. ( I ) , it is clear that the number of interferers is K x L - 1. To null all of these interferers, one would have to have K x L weights which is not practical. In our work, we focus only on the L paths of the desired user (interpath interference). Thus, the minimum number of the antenna array weights is L where typically L varies from 2 to 6. The block diagram of the space-time matched filter is shown in Fig. 1 in which the received signal vector is spatially processed by a CG beamforming circuit, one for each resolvable path ( L beamformers), followed by a ' matched filter is bank of L matched filters. The 1 matched to the code waveform in the P path c(t - T,.,) . The spatial matched filter or the beamformer weighf vector for the l* path is chosen so that the /Ih path is the main signal and the other L-1 paths are the interfering sources. The output signals from the L matched filters are combined according to the Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) principle and then are fed into the decision circuit of the desired user. As will be seen from simulation results, choosing the weights this way not only will remove the inter path interference but also will reduce the multiple access interference.

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Fig. 1 CG space-time receiver.

111.

CG ALGORITHM

CG algorithm is used to solve the operator equation y = Aw, where A is the signal matrix and y is the excitation vector (contains the information of the desired signal where the first path is the desired signal) defined as

...
A=
x,

;and

(4)

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The fundamental principle is to select a set of vectors pi such that they are A-orthogonal, i.e. 4 p i , App = 0 for i # j . The optimum weights are obtained by minimizing (/r(n)l12 where r(n) = Aw(n) - y. The following sequence of computations is performed to optimize the weight vector w [lo-1 11.
1. w ( n + l ) = w(n)+ t ( n ) p(n);

2. r ( n ) = llA"r(n)ll' / 1lAp(n)]f ; 3. r(n+l) = r(n) + t(n) p(n); 4. p(0) = -AHr(0); 5. p(n+l) = AHr(n+l)+ q(n) p(n); and 6. q ( n ) = IIA"r(n + 1)112/ llA"r(n)l12.

(6) (7) (8) (9) (10) ( 1 1)

Fig. 3 shows the antenna array magnitude response as a function of the Direction of Arrival (DoA) of the receiving users' signals and the number of the antenna elements. Path #2 is considered as the desired signal while paths #1 and #3 are considered as the interfering sources. The S N R is 25 dB. Fig. 4 shows the average BER as a function of the S N R for the CG beamformer in case of 16 active users. For comparison issues, the performance of the 1, 2, 3-fingers RAKE receiver (no beamfonning) are also shown. The performance of the CG beamformer was tested for different number of antenna weights (3, 5 , 7, and 9 weights). It is clear that there is a significant performance improvement proportional to the number of antenna weights. However, we still have the error floor because the multiple access interference is not completely eliminated. In Fig. 5 , we plot the average BER as a function of the number of the antenna weights at S N R = 25 dB while considering 16, 10 and 6 users in the cell. The surface plot in Fig. 6 shows the BER as a function of the SNR and the number of antenna weights. Finally the plots in Fig. 7 show the average BER improvements as a result of the CG beamformer. At BER = we can see that the capacity increased from 7 to 12 users. That is 70% capacity improvement.

IV.

SIMULATION RESULTS

The simulation situation shown in Fig. 2 is considered. We consider a base station with a uniform linear array of P omni-directional antennas with antenna spacing U2. We assumed BPSK Gold code spreading with processing gain G of 128. The input data rate is 9.6 Kbps (192 bits in a 20 msec frame). The channel bandwidth is 9600 x 128 = 1.2288 MHz. We considered K mobiles randomly distributed in azimuth around the base station with a uniform distribution over [-d2, d 2 ] . We also assume that three propagation paths are received from each mobile as a result of dominant reflectors and that the total received power from each user is the same for all users (perfect power control). The paths' DoA's; time delays; and the power for the user of interest are shown in Table 1 where T, is the chip duration. Table 1 User #1 channel model. I Path# 1 1 Path#2 I DoA (degree) I -20 I 10 Time delay I0 I 2 Tc I 0.5 Power I 0.25

I Path#3

I 40
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Number 01 users = 16
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Fig. 3 Array magnitude response versus the DoA and the number of weights
1oo
SNR in dB

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16 active users

Number 01 weights

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Fig. 6 BER versus the SNR and the number of the CG weights.

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4

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12

14

16

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Fig. 4 BER versus SNR with and without CG beamforming.

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Number 01 users

Fig. 7 Average BER improvement by using the CG beamforming.

Fig. 5 BER versus the number of the CG weights and the number of the active users.

V.

CONCLUSIONS

electromagnetics, IEEE Trans Ant. & Prop., Vol AP33, NO. 10,pp. 1058-1066, Oct. 1985.
(1 1)R. T. Compton, Jr., The power inversion adaptive array: concept and performance, IEEE Trans. Aerospace & Electronic systems, Vol. 15, No. 6, pp. 803-814, NOV.1979.

We have presented a beamforming technique for DSCDMA using a low-complexity and fast adaptation algorithm. The proposed technique enhances the desired user signal and suppresses the co-channel interference from other directions. Thus, the system capacity (maximum number of allowable users per cell) is increased. For future work, we will consider an interference cancellation scheme together with this system to cancel out the in-beam interference [12].

(12)Nermin A. Mohamed and J. G. Dunham, A simple combined conjugate gradient beamforming and interference cancellation scheme for DS-CDMA in a multipath fading channel, Submitted to the E E E WCNC99.

REFERENCES
(1) A. J. Viterbi, Principles of Spread Spectrum Multiple Access Communications, MA: AddisonWesley, 1995.

( 2 ) J. Proakis. Digital Communications, 31d edition. McGraw-Hill. Inc., 1995.

(3) J. Litva, T. Kwok, and Yeung Lo, Digital Beamformino in Wireless Communications, Artech House Publishers, Boston, London, 1996.

(4) R. A. Monzingo and T. W. Miller, Introduction to Adaptive Arravs, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1980.
A. Mohamed and J. G. Dunham. Performance analysis of CDMA mobile systems using antenna arrays and multi-user detection, Proceedings of the 32d Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, Nov. 1-4, 1998.

( 5 ) Nermin

( 6 ) Nermin A. Mohamed and J. G. Dunham, Performance analysis of an antenna array-based CDMA receiver using multi-user detection in a multipath Channel, Accepted for publication in the ZEEE VTCY9,Houston, TX, May 1999.

(7) B. Suard, A. Naguib, G. XU, and A. Paulraj. Performance analysis of CDMA mobile communication systems using antenna arrays, Proceedings of ICASSP93, vol. VI, MN, pp. 153-6, April 1993. (8) A. F. Naguib and A. Paulraj, Performance of wireless CDMA with M-ary orthogonal modulation and cell site antenna arrays, IEEE J . Select. Areas Commun., vol. 14, No. 9, pp, 1770-1783, Dec. 1995. (9) W. C. lakes, Microwave Mobile Communications. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974.
(10) T. K. Sarkar, and E. h a s , On a class of finite step iterative methods (conjugate directions) for solution of an operator equation arising in