Multi-user detection for the ARGOS satellite system

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate several multiuser detection (MUD) architectures for the reception of asynchronous beacon signals in the ARGOS satellite system. The case of synchronous signals is studied first. Though impractical, this case provides useful guidance on the second part of the study, that is, the design of MUD receivers for asynchronous users. This paper focuses more particularly on successive interference cancellation (SIC) receivers because they have been shown to achieve a good performance complexity trade-off. Several Eb=N0 degradation curves are obtained as a function of channel parameters. With these curves, a performance analysis is presented in order to determine in which conditions it is possible to successfully decode none, one, or more beacon signals. We show that SIC receivers can improve the percentage of served beacons from 50% to more than 67% for a population of 37,600 beacons.