1646 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 19, NO.
8, AUGUST 2001
Joint Iterative Decoding of Serially Concatenated
Error Control Coded CDMA
Zhenning Shi and Christian Schlegel, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Joint iterative decoding of multiple forward error
control (FEC) encoded data streams is studied for linear multiple
access channels, such as code-division multiple access (CDMA).
It is shown that such systems can be viewed as serially concate-
nated coding systems, and that iterative soft-decision decoding can
be performed successfully. To improve power efficiency, powerful
FEC codes are used. These FEC codes are themselves serially con-
catenated. The overall transmission system can be viewed as the
concatenation of two error control codes with the linear multiple
access channel, and soft-decision decoders are used at each stage.
A variance transfer function approach applied to the analysis
of this system captures the role of the component decoders in an
overall iterative decoding system. We show that this approach
forms a methodology to study the effects of the component codes
as well as that of the iteration schedule. Analysis and simulation
examples are presented for transmission systems that operate close
to the Shannon limit and illustrate the accuracy of the analysis.
Index Terms—CDMA, iterative decoding, multiuser detection,
serial concatenation, turbo decoding.
I. INTRODUCTION
C ODE-DIVISION multiple access (CDMA) is a popular
multiple access method whereby a number of simulta-
neous users access a channel jointly by spreading their signals
with user-specific spreading or signature sequences. CDMA
finds application in a number of modern wireless commu-
nications systems, most notably the IS-95 and cdma2000
standards for cellular telephony [13], [19]. CDMA is a linear
accessing method, i.e., the signals from the different users
superpose linearly. Correlation reception is typically used at
the individual receivers, where matched filters suppress part of
the interference generated by the joint users. Due to theoretical
limitations of the simple correlation receiver, joint detection
has been proposed and studied as an alternative to improving
performance.
Recent work has focused on designing efficient multiuser
receivers for CDMA systems which operate in conjunction
with forward error control coding (FEC). The philosophy
behind using FEC in a CDMA system is to move performance
closer to the limit, in this case the Shannon capacity of the
multiple access channel. Due to the excessive complexity of
an optimal joint decoder however, suboptimal decoders with
lower implementation complexity are considered as candidates
for practical applications.
Manuscript received December 15, 2000; revised May 1, 2001. This work was
supported in part by National Science Foundation under Grant CCR 9732962
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of
Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA (e-mail: schlegel@ee.utah.edu).
Publisher Item Identifier S 0733-8716(01)07231-6.
0733–8716/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE
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An important step forward is the realization that CDMA
combined with convolutional coding can be viewed as the
concatenation of a bank of error control codes with a “channel
encoder”—the CDMA channel—separated by interleavers (if
present). Serial turbo decoding principles can now be used on
such systems and have been proposed [17], [14], [1], [23]. In
these systems, a CDMA a posteriori probability (APP) decoder
and a bank of single-user error control APP decoders form a
closed loop system and updated soft information is exchanged
in an iterative fashion analogously to turbo decoding [3], [7].
Moher [14] demonstrated by simulation that the combination
of FEC and random interleaving can achieve optimal asymp-
totic efficiencies even with highly correlated signals of the dif-
ferent users. Powerful FEC codes combined with large inter-
leaver sizes improve performance over that of using only simple
FEC codes, and create a turbo cliff region, that is a region where
the error probability drops rapidly, following an almost ver-
tical asymptote ([2] and this paper). The difficulty is that the
CDMA channel APP decoder has a large state complexity of
order . In [23], Wang and Poor replace the APP CDMA
decoder by a simple canceler and a single-user minimum-mean
square error (MMSE) filter to perform interference suppression
as an approximation to APP decoding. The system by Alexander
et al. [1] uses only a simple interference canceler which con-
sists of a subtraction of interference estimates from the received
matched-filter signals and has the lowest complexity. Simula-
tion results show that the bit error rate (BER) performance for
both approaches is close to the single-user performance of the
code alone even for heavily loaded CDMA systems. In [17] the
use of Turbo codes achieved excellent power efficiency with
a complex APP CDMA decoder approximated by an -al-
gorithm. In this paper, we present a comprehensive approach
which achieves superior performance using a simple interfer-
ence canceler, and present an analysis methodology which al-
lows us to understand and predict the performance limits of such
systems.
For single user communication over additive white Gaussian
(AWGN) channels, concatenated error control codes have
proven to be extremely powerful, reaching the Shannon ca-
pacity to within fractions of a dB [20], [3]. Two classes of
concatenation, namely serial and parallel, are common. Parallel
concatenated coding (PCC) has recently achieved fame under
the heading of Turbo codes [7] while serially concatenated
coding (SCC) has existed much longer, but has only recently
been recognized to develop its full coding power under soft
iterative decoding.
Much effort has been spent on the analysis of both of these
cases, and the behavior of these codes in the turbo cliff region is
SHI AND SCHLEGEL: JOINT ITERATIVE DECODING OF SERIALLY CONCATENATED ERROR CONTROL CODED CDMA 1647

Fig. 1. CMDA system with individual error control encoders.

arguably best understood via the extrinsic information exchange The sources generate independent binary information bits
approach presented in [20]–[22], or a variance analysis as in . These bits are written into blocks
[10]. The error floor or error flare region, the area where the or frames of size and fed into parallel outer convolu-
error probability flattens out and away from its vertical drop, is tional encoders of rate . Random interleavers separate the
best understood as the effect of the finite minimum distance of inner from the outer encoders as is customary in SCC, real-
the code [16], [3], [18]. In [3], SCC and PCC systems are ana- izing the interleaver gain so important in Turbo codes. The inner
lyzed via the code distance spectrum and some important con- encoders operate at rate , and their output bits are mapped
clusions are drawn regarding the component codes. Most im- into BPSK symbols and, interleaved again, modulated by se-
portant for our purposes is the conclusion that the “inner code” quence spreaders. Assuming equal power of all users, the signal
of a SCC should be a recursive code in order to realize the Turbo from the th spreader is given by
gain.
There have been some efforts to apply Turbo codes to the
CDMA channel [2], however without explicit consideration of (1)
the iteration schedules when more than two component APPs
are involved. In this paper, we present a step forward in the
analysis and design of the concatenation of error control codes where
with CDMA, based on basic results for SCC systems. The first number of encoded symbols per frame;
idea is to introduce a recursive encoder between the original en- time delay of user ;
coder and the CDMA channel as shown in Fig. 1. This encoder supported on the interval , is the en-
should increase the small distances of the original system and ergy-normalized spreading waveform for user
produce the turbo effect. The serial Turbo decoding strategy is during symbol
extended and applied to a receiver with three component de- and is generated in the usual way as
coders. Variance transfer (VTR) functions are defined and used
to analyze the convergence behavior of the overall system. It
is shown how the component decoders interact with the inter- (2)
ference canceler, and how the system decoding schedule has
to be designed for low error probability and efficient conver-
gence. Finally, we present simulation examples which exhibit where
near-Shannon performance on the CDMA channel with small spreading gain, i.e., the number
component decoders. of chips per symbol;
chip interval;
th spreading chip for user ;
II. SYSTEM MODEL
unit-energy chip waveform.
Fig. 1 shows the transmitter side of a coded CDMA system We assume random spreading in this paper, i.e., the are
consisting of single user error control encoders, each com- chosen randomly and independently, and identically distributed.
prising an outer and an inner FEC code separated by random Such a system is referred to as random CDMA and finds appli-
interleavers. cation, among others, in the IS-95 and cdma2000 standards.

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1648 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 19, NO. 8, AUGUST 2001

Fig. 2. Joint decoder for a coded K -user CDMA system.

Using a nondistorting channel model, the received CDMA , and hence, the
signal embedded in additive white Gaussian noise is given by canceled matched filter values are converted into LLR
values before being passed on to the single-user decoders.
These LLR values, for user , are given by
(3)
(6)
where is zero-mean white Gaussian noise with variance .
The received signal first passes through parallel matched where denotes the values from produced by the th
filters each matched to one of the spreading sequences matched filter after cancellation. This operation requires an es-
in use at time . These matched filters are sampled once every timator of the variance .
symbol interval , and the sampled symbols of each transmis- From these input LLR values, the iterative error control de-
sion frame are organized in the vector coder generates a posteriori LLR values of the in-
formation bits and extrinsic LLR values of the inner
(4) coded bits. is used to make information bit decisions
at the current iteration. The LLR values of the coded bits are fed
where is the band-diagonal correlation matrix of the back to the interference canceler and are used to generate a soft
spreading sequences estimate of the interference values used for cancellation in the
and is filtered noise next iteration step. These soft estimates are calculated as
vector with covariance matrix .

(7)
III. JOINT ITERATIVE DECODING
The structure of an iterative receiver for the serially concate-
nated CDMA system is shown in Fig. 2, and is made up of two by inverting the LLR function defined previously. It is worth
parts: single-user FEC iterative decoders and a joint inter- noting that constitutes the minimum mean square error
ference soft-output decoder, which is approximated by an in- (MMSE) estimator due to the APP decoder,
terference canceler for complexity reasons. Its structure is the and, consequently, we observe that the variance of is
least complex since it merely calculates a canceled version of reduced from that of . The nonlinearity is a crucial
the matched filter outputs [1]: component and can be viewed as a soft bit function. The
function constitutes the hard bit function and generates a
(5) significantly larger error variance.
The estimated symbols are now used to update the
where are soft estimates of . The iterative single-user canceled matched filter values according to (5), starting a
decoders operate with the log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) new iteration. In this way, the iterative FEC decoders and the

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SHI AND SCHLEGEL: JOINT ITERATIVE DECODING OF SERIALLY CONCATENATED ERROR CONTROL CODED CDMA 1649

Fig. 3. Iterative decoder for the serial FEC concatenated code.

interference canceler form a closed loop where LLR values

are updated iteratively.
This setup, without the LLR conversion and using a poste-
riori probabilities in lieu of extrinsic LLRs, was used in [1]
with simple convolutional FECs to achieve the single-user per-
formance for these codes even on fully loaded CDMA systems,
i.e., for .
The main difficulty starts with the fact that the FEC
soft-output error control decoders are themselves iterative
decoders for two concatenated simple FECs [3]. There are two Fig. 4. Two decoder loops of the triple joint multiple access iterative decoder.
reasons for pursuing this structure. First, the serial concatena-
tion of two simple FECs produces very powerful concatenated APPs. We visualize each of these loops as transforming vari-
codes, which can be decoded by an iterative Turbo decoder. ances under a parametric input from the other loop, as shown in
Second, since the CDMA channel is an FIR system, it is not a Fig. 4.
suitable “inner code” by itself. The introduction of the inner
recursive code makes the combination of inner FEC code and
A. Interference Cancellation Loop (Loop 1)
CDMA channel recursive, and thus, produces better results.
This inner code plays a central role as we will see. This loop takes as input the canceled signal for user ,
The iterative decoder for this system is realized as shown which equals the transmitted symbols plus noise and inter-
in Fig. 3, drawn for user . The essential part of it is the two ference, i.e.
dual-input dual-output APP decoders for the inner FEC code. It
takes as inputs the a priori LLRs of the inner and outer coded (8)
bits, and form as outputs refined extrinsic LRRs based on the
code structure. A detailed description of the APP procedure Under some quite general conditions is zero-mean
is included in [4] and [5]. Note that the APP decoders are for Gaussian distributed with variance , and white due to the
single-user systems only, while the multiple-user interference interleavers. However, (8) is accurate only if extrinsic LLRs are
canceler (MUIC) operates on the joint signal. As illustration, used in the iteration process, otherwise a signal degradation oc-
we use an inner convolutional code with rate curs, and
and generator , and an
outer convolutional code with and generator (9)
. The overall FEC
has, therefore, a rate of . with as well as correlations between successive iterations.
Clearly, the question now is how to operate this combined de- These effects make accurate predictions with our methodology
coder, i.e., how to design the iteration schedules between FEC impossible. The effect of signal degradation in cancellation sys-
iterations and cancellation iterations. As we will see, the can- tems using a posteriori LLR values has been observed and doc-
cellation operation cannot be performed independently of the umented in [8] and [9]. We will restrict our analysis to extrinsic
FEC decoding if optimal performance is the goal. In [17], for LLRs in this paper.
example, a heuristic schedule is used of operating several FEC The input to loop 1 can be characterized by , i.e., the vari-
iterations, as typical for Turbo decoding, with only single-can- ance of the Gaussian input signal, and its output by the inner
cellation iterations. bit error variance . This measure for the
output is chosen for the following reason: The output variance
IV. VARIANCE TRANSFER CHARACTERISTICS ANALYSIS of the canceler (5) can be calculated in closed form for random
CDMA [1] by the linear relation
The decoder in Fig. 3 has two decoding loops, a first loop
involving the interference canceler and the inner FEC APP de-
coder and a second loop involving the inner and the outer FEC (10)

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1650 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 19, NO. 8, AUGUST 2001

Fig. 7. Variance transfer exchange behavior between loop 1 and loop 2.

Fig. 5. Variance transfer characteristics (VTCs) of the components inside
loop one. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) value E =N = 0:04 dB, which
corresponds to (E =N ) = 1:8 dB.

Fig. 8. BERs of the triple-iterative joint multiuser detector discussed in this

section.

B. Error Control Decoder Loop (Loop 2)

Loop 2 connects the two error control decoders just as in the
Fig. 6. VTCs of the two error control APP decoders in loop 2. well-known iterative decoding loop of turbo codes. In fact, loop
2 is identical to a serial turbo decoder [3]. The two component
The transfer function decoders exchange extrinsic LLR values, and we measure their
behavior by measuring the error variance of the associated soft
(11) bits, i.e.

is a function of the code used, and the parameter is a relia-

bility measure of the outer bit estimates delivered to loop 1 by (12)
loop 2. Currently, no analytical techniques for the evaluation of and
are known.
Fig. 5 shows the transfer functions of the component block in-
side loop 1 for and , i.e., a so-called fully loaded
system. The cancelled channel variance is plotted along (13)
the vertical axis and along the horizontal axis. Note that the Both transfer functions are constrained to the interval [0, 1];
input of one function is the output of the other and iterations are with being reliable, and being unreliable,
described by zig-zag paths reflecting between the two transfer corresponding to large bit errors.
curves to an equilibrium point. These reflections start at point Both variance transfer functions and depend on the
with the full uncanceled input variance , respective error control codes. has as additional input the
and bounce off the -curve back to the straight interference variance from the cancelled channel.
canceler line and so on. The iteration trajectory as plotted in Fig. 6 shows these two transfer functions and two simulated
Fig. 5 are actual measurements of the loop 1 component sys- trajectories. Convergence to zero variance is only possible if
tems. is below a certain threshold, in this case . For

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SHI AND SCHLEGEL: JOINT ITERATIVE DECODING OF SERIALLY CONCATENATED ERROR CONTROL CODED CDMA
Fig. 9. Successful and unsuccessful iteration schedules for operation at (E
variances larger than that, the error control loop will not reach
zero-variance convergence. The inner code is the same
recursive convolutional code as in Fig. 5, but the mea-
surement is on the bits . between the two transfer curves, and progresses inside the con-
It becomes evident that a some point the input variance
too large for the FEC decoders in loop 2 to progress very far.
According to Fig. 6, this happens for which translates
into dB. Below this value iterations of only the
error control loop will not lead to zero-variance convergence.
The number of iterations inside each loop at each call
is referred to as the iteration schedule
, where is the number of iterations in
loop at its -th call. The situation is not quite as difficult
to analyze as may appear. It is evident from Figs. 5 and 6 that
increasing the number of iterations monotonically improve
the variance, and therefore, more iterations in each block are
always better from a performance point of view. However, there
is a point of diminishing return, especially in loop 1, where
additional iterations deliver very little once the loop is near the
equilibrium.
Fig. 7 captures the behavior of the iteration schedule, i.e., the
switching between the two loops. The two functions plotted are
the full circle variance transfer functions of each loop with the
variance of the other loop as input. That is, the functions
and (14)
These functions are extracted from executing iterations in
the computation for Fig. 5, and iterations in Fig. 6.
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1651
=N ) = 2:6 dB.
The particular example in Fig. 7 uses , and ,
which give a close to best performance. The trajectory of mea-
sured variances from an actual simulation is nicely contained
vergence channel from point with four iterations of loop 1 to
the convergence point with , leading to very small BERs
as shown in the Fig. 8, which presents the BERs of this iteration
schedule as a function of the channel . As predicted, for
dB, the open channel leads to convergence with
five cycles.
Fig. 9 illustrates that different iteration schedules exhibit dif-
ferent convergence behaviors. In fact, it is evident from our pre-
vious discussion that the schedule with four iterations in each
loop is superior to schedules with fewer iterations inside one
or both loops. Three such unsuccessful schedules are shown in
Fig. 9.
V. FURTHER RESULTS AND APPLICATIONS
We have used the described variance transfer methodology to
gain some insight into some basic questions. In order to illustrate
its usefulness in the code design, we have interchanged the inner
and outer FEC codes. The outer code is now the lower rate
code and the inner code operates at the high rate
.
Fig. 10 shows both the transfer exchange graph and the BERs
for this switched system. Note that a loss of about 0.3 dB oc-
curs w.r.t. the original ordering of codes., which is accurately
1652
(a)
Fig. 10. BERs of the triple-iterative joint multiuser detector with reversed FEC codes.
(a)
Fig. 11. BERs of an overloaded system with K = 20 and N = 10.
predicted by the analysis. Again, four iterations in each loop
achieve the point of limiting return.
The second analysis example we study is one for an over-
loaded system. We use users with processing gain
, thus doubly load the random CDMA system using
the same concatenated codes in the original configuration with
, and . Fig. 11 again shows the transfer
exchange graph and the associated BERs of the system. It be-
comes evident that a significantly larger is required in
order to open a channel, in fact dB for the
transfer exchange graph. Despite the larger SNR required, the
turbo cliff is still clearly present. We can see that the channel is
quite unbalanced, pinching off early. This is due to the fact that
we did not undertake any code design, and future designs will
target to open that channel at that point, at the cost of channel
width for small variances. We also observe that the measure-
ments are somewhat inaccurate in this example. This is due, we
suspect, to the relatively small interleaver sizes of 10 000 in-
formation bits only, which causes some residual correlation to
degrade the variances. For larger interleavers, this effect disap-
pears.
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IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 19, NO. 8, AUGUST 2001
(b)
(b)
VI. CONCLUSION
We have presented a coding and decoding methodology
for joint detection systems for CDMA which achieves
near-Shannon limit performance by using serially concatenated
simple FEC codes. The decoder is an iterative decoder for
the triple serially concatenated system of FEC codes and
CDMA channel which iterates soft information between three
component systems, forming two loops, where the inner FEC
decoder participates in both loops. The iteration schedule has
been defined as the sequence of successive APP iterations to be
executed in each loop. The multiple access decoder has been
realized as a simple interference canceler.
A variance transfer analysis has been presented and used to
study the iteration schedules of the decoder for a specific system
with user with processing gain , each encoded
by a concatenated FEC system using low-complexity inner and
outer recursive convolutional codes. It has been shown that for
this system an unconventional iteration schedule with several
iterations inside each loop is superior to other schedules and
achieves near-Shannon limit performance.
SHI AND SCHLEGEL: JOINT ITERATIVE DECODING OF SERIALLY CONCATENATED ERROR CONTROL CODED CDMA
The presented methodology is general and can be used to de-
sign component systems, predict performance, as well as study
their interaction and design successful iteration schedules. Fu-
ture work will target the design of optimal code combinations
and the study of very large systems with . lication.
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Zhenning Shi was born in Beijing, China, in 1975.
He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering
from Tsinghua University, China, in 1998. Since
September 1998, he has been working toward the
Ph.D. degree with the Department of Electrical
Engineering, University of Utah.
His research interests includes multiaccess com-
munications and digital signal processing.
Christian Schlegel (S’86–M’88–SM’97) received
the Dipl. El. Ing. ETH degree from the Federal
Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland,
in 1984, and the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees in
electrical engineering from the University of Notre
Dame, South Bend, Indiana, in 1987 and 1989,
respectively.
From 1988 to 1992, he was with Asea Brown
Boveri, Ltd., Baden, Switzerland. He spend the
1991–1992 academic year as Visiting Assistant Pro-
fessor with the University of Hawaii, Manoa, before
joining the Digital Communications Group, University of South Australia,
Adelaide. From 1994–1996, he was with the University of Texas, San Antonio,
and since 1996, he has been with the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. His
research interests are in the area of digital communications, code modulation,
multiple access communications, space–time coding for high-capacity wireless
systems, and the design of analog VLSI decoders for digital systems. He is
the author of the research monograph “Trellis Coding” published by IEEE
Press in 1997, and is currently working on “Coordinated Multiple User
Communications,” co-authored with Professor Alex Grant from the University
of South Australia, and on an expansion of his research monograph as “Trellis
and Turbo Coding” with Professor Lance Pérez. Dr. Schlegel received an NSF
1997 Career Award in support of his research in multiuser communications.
Dr. Schlegel is currently an Associate Editor for coding theory and techniques
for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, and the technical co-chair
of the IEEE Information Theory Workshop 2001, to be held in Cairns, Australia.