Spatially Reduced Search Joint Detection for Overloaded Array Processing

Capacity (measured in number of users/channel for a particular Quality of Service) is an important metric for any wireless communication system. The easiest way to increase a capacity is to use more frequency-spectrum. However, as the wireless industry is booming, increased demand for spectrum has made this option prohibitively expensive. Antena Arrays have long been an attractive alternative for increasing the capacity of a wireless communication system. We say an array is overloaded if the number of near-equal power signals impinging on it exceeds the number of antenna elements. Conventional array processing receivers break down in overloaded environments. Virginia Tech has developed a new class of array processing algorithms which can process many more signals than elements with an achievable real-time computational complexity. This algorithm allows a dramatic increase in the capacity of current wireless communication systems without using very large antenna arrays.

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