Complex Hadamard Transform-Based Quaternary

Quasi-Orthogonal Sequences and Allocation for

DS-CDMA Systems
Shoulie Xie, Zhenghui Gu and Susanto Rahardja
Institute for Infocomm Research
21 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Singapore 119613
Email: {slxie, zhenghui, rsusanto}@i2r.a-star.edu.sg
AbstractThe capacity of downlink direct-sequence code-
division multiple access (DS-CDMA) system is often limited by
the available number of Walsh-Hadamard (WH) codes. Using
quasi-orthogonal sequences (QOSs) is a practical solution to
enhance the capacity. In this paper, a new construction for a set
of quaternary quasi-orthogonal sequences (QQOSs) is proposed
based on a complex Hadamard transform (CHT) matrix. This
approach is simple and easy to generate QQOSs with any length
in {2
m
, m = 1, 2, . . . , }. Meanwhile, allocation schemes of pro-
posed QQOSs are investigated for downlink DS-CDMA systems
over frequency selective fading channel. Simulation shows that
different sequence allocation schemes result in different bit error
rate performance.
I. INTRODUCTION
Prevalent code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems,
such as IS-95, CDMA2000, and WCDMA, employ Walsh-
Hadamard (WH) sequences as signature sequences due to their
orthogonality and simple construction. However, the number
of orthogonal WH code set is the same as the dimension of
codes, the capacity of downlink system may be limited by
the number of available WH codes. To overcome this con-
straint and increase system capacity, a set of quasi-orthogonal
sequences (QOSs) [2], [3] were dened as an extension to
the orthogonal WH code set. It is noted that such additional
sequences inevitably feature a non-null cross-correlation with
the original WH family even without multipath dispersion. But
QOSs belong to another orthogonal code set that minimizes
the maximum correlation with the original Walsh-Hadamard
code set, and is generated via multiplying the WH codes by a
vector referred to as masking sequence (or masking function)
[3]. In [3], a general procedure of constructing binary QOSs
from well-known families of binary sequences with good
correlation, including the Kasami and Gold sequence families,
as well as from the binary Kerdock code was provided.
Since 3G and beyond 3G CDMA systems [1], [8] widely use
quaternary phase-shift-keyed (QPSK) data modulation instead
of binary phase-shit-keyed (BPSK) in IS-95 to attain higher
data rates, it is natural to use quaternary phase sequences
as spreading sequences rather than binary sequences, and
this has been taken in current 3G CDMA system [1], [8].
Of course, quaternary QOS family, which consists of binary
Walsh-Hadamard sequences and quaternary sequences, should
also be considered in order to increasing system capacity.
Some examples of quaternary QOSs drawn from well-known
Family A [4], [6] were included in [3] for small lengths.
However, it is computationally complex and considerably
difcult to construct middle-length and long-length quaternary
QOSs from Family A because the exhaustive search over all
Family A sequences was needed there.
In this paper, a construction approach for a family of qua-
ternary QOSs based on a complex Hadamard transform (CHT)
matrix is introduced. Moreover, CHT matrix is generated by
using recursive Kronecker product. Hence, compared to the
quaternary QOSs drawn from Family A, this recursive con-
struction is simple and easy to generate a class of quaternary
QOSs.
When one set of QOS sequences is employed to increase
its user capacity, previous study has found that system per-
formance was affected by the allocation strategy of spreading
sequences [5], [7], where only binary QOS sequences were
considered. In this paper, we also investigate different allo-
cation schemes of the proposed quaternary quasi-orthogonal
sequences in downlink DS-CDMA system over frequency
selective fading channel. Simulation results show that the bit
error rate performance of DS-CDMA can be improved by
careful allocation of the spreading code sequences to different
users.
II. BASIC DEFINITIONS AND PRELIMINARIES
Let x = (x(0), x(1), , x(N 1)) be a sequence
of length N, where each x(n) is referred to as a chip. The
sequence x is called a binary sequence if x(n) GF(2)
and a quaternary sequence if x(n) Z
4
, the ring of integer
modulo 4. A complex sequence is called a quadriphase
sequence if every element (chip) belongs to {+1, j, 1, j}
with j =

1. A quaternary sequence can be converted into

a quadriphase sequence by the phase transformation : n
j
n
, n = 0, 1, 2, 3. Hence, in this paper, we will use complex
quadriphase sequences instead of real quaternary sequences.
For simplicity of notation, quaternary and quadriphase
will be exchanged to use here.
1-4244-0411-8/06/$20.00 2006 IEEE.
Walsh-Hadamard matrix with dimension 2
m
2
m
can be
constructed using a simple recursive procedure as follows.
H
m
=
m

i=1
H
1
= H
1
H
m1
= H
1
H
1
. .. .
m times
, (1)
where denotes the matrix Kronecker product, and H
1
is
dened as
H
1
=

1 1
1 1

. (2)
And Walsh-Hadamard code set is dened by
H
m
= {h
i
|h
i
is the ith row of H
m
, i = 0, 1, , 2
m
1}.
(3)
Notice that the rst row of a matrix is dened as the zeroth
row here.
The correlation between two quaternary sequences x and y
is dened in quadriphase form as
R
x,y

=
N1

n=0
x(n)y

(n), (4)
where

indicates complex conjugate.
Denition 2.1: The set F = {f
i
|i = 0, 1, , M 1}
of M quaternary (quadriphase) Quasi-Orthogonal Sequences
(QOSs) of the length N = 2
m
is dened as a set of quaternary
sequences satisfying the following three properties [3]:
1) F contains H
m
2) For any two distinct sequences f
i
, f
l
F, we have
|R
fi,fl
|

N.
3) For any f F \ H
m
, any h H
m
, and any integers
L, r, where L = 2
l
, 2 l m, and 0 r N/L1,

rL+L1

n=rL
f(n)h

(n)

L. (5)
III. CONSTRUCTION OF NEW QQOSS
In this section, a novel set of quaternary quasi-orthogonal
sequences can be constructed based on a complex Hadamard
matrix, which is similar to the construction of sequences in
H
m
by using the recursive matrix Kronecker product.
A special complex Hadamard transform (CHT) matrix U of
order N = 2
m
is used in this paper, which is a square matrix
with elements 1 and j and is constructed by
U
m
=
m

i=1
U
1
= U
1
U
m1
= U
1
U
1
. .. .
m times
, (6)
and U
1
is dened as
U
1
=

1 j
1 j

= H
1
diag{1, j} (7)
with diag{1, j} being a diagonal matrix.
Dene a set of quadriphase sequences as
U
m
= {u
i
|u
i
is the ith row of U
m
}. (8)
Remark 3.1: U
1
U

1
= U

1
U
1
= 2I
2
and |det(U
1
)|
2
= 2
2
.
Hence, the CHT matrix is orthogonal. Moreover, matrix U
m
in (6) is one matrix of HSP-UCHT matrices introduced in [9],
where unied complex Hadamard transform (UCHT) matrices
are dened and classied into two groups: one is UCHT with
half-spectrum-property (HSP-UCHT), and other is UCHT with
non-half-spectrum-property (NHSP-UCHT), and each group
has 32 different matrices.
It has been shown in [9] that the NHSP-UCHT sequences
have very similarly poor autocorrelation properties to WH
sequences. But HSP-UCHT sequences exhibit reasonable good
compromise between autocorrelation and cross correlation
functions. This property will be considered during the study
of sequences allocation schemes latter in this paper.
Dene a new set of quaternary sequences
F = H
m
U
m
. (9)
Then we have the following main result.
Theorem 3.1: The set of quaternary sequences F in (9) is
quasi-orthogonal.
Proof: It is easily proved by using mathematical induce
method.
Remark 3.2: In [3], the construction of masking sequences
for quaternary QOSs was drawn from exhaustive search of
Family A. It is obviously observed that q =
m

i=1
q
1
with
q
1
= [1 j] is a masking function for the proposed family
of quasi-orthogonal sequences F in (9). This shows that
the masking function can be obtained by using the simply
recursive Kronecker product. Hence, our method is simple and
recursive.
Remark 3.3: It can be easily shown that 64 sets of se-
quences based on UCHT are equivalent to either WH se-
quences or U
m
sequence in (6) over Z
4
in terms of correlation
functions. Hence, in this paper, we can only consider one
set of quaternary quasi-orthogonal sequences generating from
UCHT, although there are 64 sets of UCHT-based sequences.
IV. SYSTEM MODEL
A single-cell environment system model is considered in
this paper. This is sufcient to assess the effects of multipath
fading and interference components from other users on the
performance.
For a DS-CDMA downlink communication system, a com-
plex baseband equivalent model with binary phase-shift-keyed
(BPSK) data and complex signature sequences over multipath
fading channel is considered in this paper. The baseband
representation of the total signal transmitted on the downlink
is given by
s(t) =
K1

k=0
s
k
(t) =
K1

k=0

P
k
b
k
(t)c
k
(t) (10)
where 0 K 2N 1 is the number of users, N is the
length of the spreading sequences, s
k
(t) =

P
k
b
k
(t)c
k
(t) is
the transmitted signal of the kth user. P
k
represents the power
of the kth transmitted signal, b
k
(t) =

n=
b
(n)
k
p
T
(tnT)
is data signal of the kth user, b
(n)
k
{1, +1} denotes the nth
data bit value of the kth user, and the function p
T
(t) is the
rectangular pulse of symbol duration T. c
k
(t) is the complex
spreading sequence dened by c
k
(t) =

m=
c
(m)
k
(t
mT
c
) and c
(m)
k
denotes the mth complex chip value of the
kth user, the function (t) is a chip waveform that is time-
limited to [0, T
c
) with

Tc
0

2
(t)dt = T
c
, including the
rectangular pulse of duration T
c
, and T
c
is called chip duration.
Throughout this paper, it is assumed that T = NT
c
. Power
control is assumed to be perfect, and the transmitted signal
power P
k
is assumed to be known.
At the base station transmitter, the signals of all K users
are symbol synchronously added before passing through a
frequency-selective multipath fading channel. The complex
baseband equivalent impulse response of the multipath channel
is written as
h(t) =
L1

l=0

l
e
jl
(t
l
) (11)
where L is the number of resolvable propagation paths,
l
e
jl
and
l
are the complex fading factor and propagation delay
of the lth path, respectively. Note that
l
can be Rayleigh-
, Rician- or Nakagami-distributed, depending on a specic
channel model. All random variables in (11) are assumed
independent for l. The channel parameters
l
,
l
and
l
are
here assumed to be known in the despreading and demodula-
tion process, although in practice the impulse response of the
channel is typically estimated using pilot symbols or a pilot
channel. Moreover, we assume that the multipaths at the input
of the receiver are resolvable and chip synchronized, i.e., they
are spaced at least one chip duration apart in time, and the
relative delays are multiples of chip duration. Without loss
of generality, the resolved paths are assumed to be numbered
such that 0
0
<
1
< <
L1
< T.
Hence, the baseband complex representation of the signal
input to the receiver of any user is given by
r(t) =
K1

k=0
L1

l=0

P
k

l
e
jl
b
k
(t
l
)c
k
(t
l
) +n(t) (12)
where n(t) is the complex background additive white Gaussian
noise with one-sided power spectral density N
0
.
In order to mitigate multipath fading effect, a RAKE re-
ceiver with coherent demodulation is employed. The RAKE
receiver structure is shown in Fig. 1, where the number of
ngers is equal to the number of resolvable paths.
Since the symbols b
(n)
k
are independent and identically
distributed (i.i.d.) from one symbol duration to another and
from one user to another, without loss of generality, we focus
on the receiver output of the user 0 for the zeroth transmitted
symbol. The complex correlator output of the ith nger of the
user 0 is given by
r
i
=

T+i
i
r(t)c

0
(t
i
)e
ji
dt

(13)
where (x) is the real part of x. Later, we will use (x) to
denote the imaginary part of x.
Finally, the combiner output that produces a decision statis-
tic is given by
Z =
L1

i=0
w
i
r
i
(14)
where the selection of the combining weights w
i
s determines
the specic diversity combining technique.
V. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
In this section, we shall investigate effect of correlation
functions on system performance by considering the RAKE
receiver shown as in Fig. 1. It follows from (12) and (13) that
the correlator output of the ith RAKE nger for the user 0
can be written as
r
i
= T

P
0

i
b
(0)
0
+I
(i)
MUI
+I
(i)
MP
+
i
(t) (15)
where
I
(i)
MUI
=

K1

k=1

P
k

i
b
(0)
k

T+i
i
c
k
(t
i
)c

0
(t
i
)dt

(16)
I
(i)
MP
=

K1

k=0
L1

l=0,l=i

P
k

l
e
j(li)

T+i
i
b
k
(t
l
)c
k
(t
l
)c

0
(t
i
)dt

(17)

i
(t) =

T+i
i
n(t)c

0
(t
i
)dt

(18)
It can be seen that the interference components I
(i)
MUI
and
I
(i)
MP
are due to the interference from the ith path of other
users signals and from the remaining L 1 paths from all
users signals, respectively, and
i
(t) is due to the AWGN. It
can be easily shown that {
i
(t)} are i.i.d. Gaussian random
variables with zero mean and variance of TN
0
/2.
Dene
C
k,m
(q) =

N1q

p=0
c
(p)
k

c
(p+q)
m

, 0 q N 1
N1+q

p=0
c
(pq)
k

c
(p)
m

, 1 N q < 0
0, |q| N
(19)
Then, let
l

i
= q
l
T
c
. With the assumption of chip
synchronization, it can be obtained that q
l
is an integer and
I
(i)
MUI
=

K1

k=1

P
k

i
b
(0)
k
C
k,0
(0)T
c

(20)
I
(i)
MP
=

T
c
i1

l=0
K1

k=0

P
k

l
e
j(li)
R
k0
+T
c
L1

l=i+1
K1

k=0

P
k

l
e
j(li)

R
k0

(21)
where
R
k0
= b
(0)
k
C
k,0
(q
l
) +b
(1)
k
C
k,0
(N +q
l
), (22)

R
k0
= b
(1)
k
C
k,0
(q
l
N) +b
(0)
k
C
k,0
(q
l
). (23)
Note that when orthogonal spreading codes are employed
in downlink for the rst N users, such as WH real spreading
codes and the orthogonal CHT complex spreading sequences
in this paper, we have
C
k,0
(0) = 0, 1 k N 1, (24)
when the number of users is larger than N but less than 2N,
i.e., N K 2N, we have
C
k,0
(0) =

N, N k 2N 1, (25)
Hence, if the number of users N < K < 2N,
I
(i)
MUI
=

N1

k=1

P
k

i
b
(0)
k
C
k,0
(0)T
c
+
K1

k=N

P
k

i
b
(0)
k
C
k,0
(0)T
c

(K N)

P
k

i
b
(0)
k
T
c

. (26)
It can be seen from (21) that the interference from other
paths is related to both autocorrelation and crosscorrelation
functions. Hence good sequences with reasonable comprise
between these functions are suitable for multipath channels.
Hence sequences based on the complex Hadamard transform
in this paper are assigned to rst N users, then if more users
are needed, WH sequences are used. This scheme may be good
allocation. This will be further veried in the next section and
simulations in this paper.
VI. SEQUENCE ALLOCATION SCHEMES
In this section several different allocation policies between
the proposed QQOSs and original WH sequences in DS-
CDMA downlink system are provided. These assignment
strategies will be used in the next section and will clearly
show that the bit error probability do depend on the assignment
strategies of the quaternary quasi-orthogonal sequences.
Separate Allocation 1 In this case, Walsh-Hadamard codes
are assigned rst, one after the other, only when the Walsh
Hadamard set is depleted, quaternary QOS codes are intro-
duced in the system. Note that for this policy, Walsh-Hadamard
users experience a gradually increasing interference as more
users (Walsh and QQOS users) enter the system, but whereas
the very rst active QQOS user immediately perceives the
maximum interference from the whole set of Walsh-Hadamard
codes.
Separate Allocation 2 In this case, QQOS codes are assigned
rst; until these quaternary QOS codes are used up, Walsh-
Hadamard codes are introduced into the system. It is similar to
the above allocation, for this policy, QQOS users experience
a gradually increasing interference as more users (WH and
QQOS users) enter the system, but due to proposed CHT-
based sequences can provide good autocorrelations compared
to WH sequences, so in the rst stage (the number of users
K < N), this allocation outperforms the above case.
Mixed Allocation In this case, a Walsh-Hadamard code
followed by a recursive quaternary QOS code is assigned in
turn, and this pattern is repeated until all codes are given away.
Obviously, for this strategy the performance experienced by
the reference user is the same, regardless of the code sequence
employing (Walsh code or QQOS).
VII. SIMULATION RESULTS
This section reports the simulation results obtained for
an DS-CDMA downlink system with the proposed recur-
sive QQOSs in slowly-varying frequency-selective Rayleigh
fading channel. The different allocation strategies previously
described are employed in the simulations. The simulated
system considers the data is spread by the allocated sequence
with a length of N = 32. The channel contains L = 4 resolv-
able paths. In the RAKE receiver, maximum-ratio combining
technique is employed.
In Fig. 2, the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of the system
versus the number of users K = 1 to 64 is shown, where
the policies of Separate Allocation 1, 2 and Mixed Allocation
are compared. Here, E
b
/N
0
= 15dB. From Fig. 2, it is
found that the separate allocations in most cases outperform
the mixed allocations. Furthermore, with separate allocation,
orthogonal codes are assigned to the rst 32 users, and there is
no interference from other users through the same path, thus
the BER keeps low when the number of users K varies from
1 to 32. With K > 32, QOSs are introduced and the system
capacity has been expanded, though the BER performance
degrades continuously with the increase of K. On the other
hand, Fig. 2 also shows that Separate Allocation 2, using
quaternary CHT-based sequences in rst stage (the number
of users K < 32) has better BER performance than the
other separate or mixed allocation policies. The reason is
that the proposed CHT-based sequences can provide better
autocorrelations than WH sequences.
The BER versus E
b
/N
0
with Mixed Allocation and Separate
Allocation 2 schemes are compared in Fig. 3. With the number
of users K = 10, the separate allocation employs only orthog-
onal CHT-based sequences, and the users are not effected by
WH code. But for mixed allocation, the 5 Walsh users will
be affected by 5 QQOS users. Hence, the separate allocation
signicantly outperforms the mixed allocation. While at K =
40, they are quite close since in both cases the interference
comes from both WH and QQOS users.
VIII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new set of quaternary quasi-orthogonal
sequences has been presented based on complex Hadamard
transform. The proposed construction is simple and recursive,
which is similar to the construction of real Walsh orthogonal
sequences. Analytical and simulation results show that if
the proposed quaternary QOSs are assigned rst in separate
allocation scheme, the DS-CDMA system have better BER
performance than that with other separate or mixed allocation
policies in this paper.
0 *
0
( )
j
k
c t e

( ) r t
1 *
1
( )
j
k
c t e

1 *
1
( )
L j
k L
c t e

Z
0
r
1
r
1 L
r

Re(.)
Re(.)
Re(.)

0
w
1
w
1 L
w

Fig. 1. RAKE receiver
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
10
4
10
3
10
2
10
1
10
0
Number of users
B
E
R
Sep,QQOS+WH
Sep,WH+QQOS
Mix
Fig. 2. BER versus the number of users K with different sequence
allocation policies in DS-CDMA system over frequency selective fading
channel (E
b
/N
0
= 15dB, sequence length = 32)
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10
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10
1
10
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E
b
/N
0
(dB)
B
E
R
Sep, 10user
Sep, 40user
Mix, 10user
Mix, 40user
Fig. 3. BER versus E
b
/N
0
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