An antenna array is overloaded when the number of cochannel signals in its operating environment exceeds the number of elements. Conventional space-time array processing for narrow-band signals fails in overloaded environments. Overloaded array processing (OLAP) is most difficult when signals impinging on the array are near equal power, have tight excess bandwidth, and are of identical signal type. Despite the failure of conventional beamforming in such environments, OLAP becomes possible when a receiver exploits additional signal properties such as the finite-alphabet property and signal excess-bandwidth. This thesis proposes three approaches to signal extraction in overloaded environments, each providing a different tradeoff in performance and complexity. The first receiver architecture extracts signals from an overloaded environment through the use of MMSE interference rejection filtering embedded in a successive interference cancellation (SIC) architecture. The second receiver architecture enhances signal extraction performance by embedding a stronger interference rejection receiver, the reduced-state maximum aposteriori probability (RS-MAP) algorithm in a similar SIC architecture. The third receiver fine-tunes the performance of spatially reduced search joint detection (SRSJD) with the application of an energy focusing transform (EFT), a complexity reducing front-end linear pre-processor. A new type of EFT, the Energy Focusing Unitary Relaxed Transform (EFURT) is developed. This transform facilitates a continuous tradeoff between noise-enhancement and error-propagation in an SRSJD framework. EFURT is used to study the role of this tradeoff for SRSJD receivers in a variety of signal environments. It is found that for the environments studied in this thesis, SRSJD enjoys an aggressive reduction in interference at the expense of possible noise-enhancement. / Ph. D.

In airborne communication systems such as airborne cell-extender repeaters the receiver faces the challenge of demodulating the signal of interest (SOI) in the presence of excessive amounts of Co-Channel Interference (CCI) from a large number of sources. This results in the overloaded environment where the number of near-equal power co-channel interferers exceeds the number of antenna array elements. This thesis first analyzes the interference environment experienced by an airborne cellular repeater flying at high altitudes. Link budget analysis using a two-ray propagation model shows that the antenna array mounted on an airborne receiver has to recover the SOI out of hundreds of co-channel interfering signals. This necessitates use of complex overloaded array signal processing techniques. An extensive literature survey on narrowband signal extraction algorithms shows that joint detection schemes, coupled with antenna arrays, provide a solution for narrowband overloaded array problem where as traditional beamforming techniques fail. Simulation results in this thesis investigates three "promising" overloaded array processing algorithms, Multi-User Decision Feedback Equalizer (MU-DFE), Iterative Least Squares with Projection (ILSP), and Iterative Least Squares with Enumeration (ILSE). ILSE is a non-linear joint maximum-likelihood detector, is shown to demodulate many more signals than elements even when the users are closely spaced and the channel is blindly estimated. Multi-user time delay estimation is one of the most important aspects of channel estimation for overloaded array processing. The final chapter of the thesis proposes a low-complexity data-aided time-delay estimation structure for embedding in a Per Survivor Processing (PSP) trellis for overloaded array processing. An extensive analysis proves that the multi-user delay estimation is separable, which leads to the proposed multi-user algorithm that estimates the user delays with a bank of simple data-aided synchronization loops to reduce the complexity. This thesis shows simulation results for the single-user case where the low-complexity Delay Locked Loop (DLL) structure, working at a low oversampling rate of 2 samples per symbol, estimates and compensates for any integer or non-integer sample delay within ±Tsym(symbol period). Two extensions to this technique are proposed to provide efficient multi-user delay estimation. The first multi-user structure employs a bank of DLLs, which compensate for the timing offset of each user simultaneously. This multi-user algorithm is suitable for CDMA-type applications, where each user has a distinct PN-code with good auto- and cross-correlation properties. We show that for spreading gain of 31, the presence of an interpolator enables us to reduce the oversampling factor from 4 to 2 samples per chip. Thus, the requirements of the A/D converter are relaxed without sacrificing system performance. Furthermore, we show that the proposed scheme meets the requirements of multi-user interference cancellation techniques for residual worst-case timing errors, i.e., residual timing error < 0.2 Tc, as reported in [200]. Finally, the thesis recommends a similar multi-user structure for narrowband TDMA-type system, which is based on bank of DLLs with whitening pre-filters at the front end of each branch. / Master of Science

An antenna array is overloaded when the number of cochannel signals in its operating environment exceeds the number of elements. Conventional space-time array processing for narrow-band signals fails in overloaded environments. Overloaded array processing (OAP) is most difficult when signals impinging on the array are near equal power, have tight excess bandwidth, and are of identical signal type. In this thesis, we first demonstrate how OAP is theoretically possible with the joint maximum likelihood (JML) receiver. However, for even a modest number of interfering signals, the JML receiverà ­s computational complexity quickly exceeds the real-time ability of any computer. This thesis proposes an iterative joint detection technique, Spatially Reduced Search Joint Detection, (SRSJD), which approximates the JML receiver while reducing its computational complexity by several orders of magnitude. This complexity reduction is achieved by first exploiting spatial separation between interfering signals with a linear pre-processing stage, and second, performing iterative joint detection with a (possibly) tail-biting and time"-varying trellis. The algorithm is sub-optimal but is demonstrated to well approximate the optimum receiver in modest signal to interference ratios. SRSJD is shown to demodulate over 2M zero excess bandwidth synchronous QPSK signals with an M element array. Also, this thesis investigates a temporal processing technique similar to SRSJD, Temporally Reduced Search Joint Detection (TRSJD), that separates co-channel, asynchronous, partial response signals. The technique is demonstrated to separate two near equal power QPSK signals with r= .35 root raised-cosine pulse shapes." / Master of Science