Joint decoding and interference estimation in coded time hopping impulse radio systems

The performance of time hopping impulse radio systems is severely affected by asynchronous multiple access interference (MAI). The transmission reliability can be enhanced by using correction coding provided that some knowledge on the interference scenario is made available at the receiver. In this paper we design an efficient decoding and interference estimation receiver that embed interference estimation into Maximum Likelihood detector. The collision model approach permits to simplify the MAI estimation to the number of colliding users in each frame. We also analytically assess the error rate performance in the limiting case of perfect MAI estimation (lower bound on biterror-rate) and no-estimation (upper bound). Simulation results validate the proposed scheme and the analytical analysis.