Blind maximum SINR receiver for the DS-CDMA downlink

We address the problem of downlink interference rejection in a DS-CDMA system. Periodic orthogonal Walsh-Hadamard sequences spread different users' symbols followed by scrambling by a symbol aperiodic base-station specific overlay sequence. The point-to-point propagation channel from the cell-site to a certain mobile station is the same for all downlink signals (desired user as well as the intracell interference). Orthogonality of the underlying Walsh-Hadamard sequences is destroyed by multipath propagation, resulting in multiuser interference if a coherent combiner (the RAKE receiver) is employed. In this paper, we propose a blind linear equalization algorithm which equalizes for the common downlink channel, thus rendering the user signals orthogonal again. A simple code matched filter subsequently suffices to cancel the multiple access interference (MAI) from intracell users. It is shown that the receiver maximizes the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) at its output.