Channel Estimation and Signal Detection for NLOS Ultraviolet Scattering Communication with Space Division Multiple Access

We design a receiver assembling several photomultipliers (PMTs) as an array to increase the field of view (FOV) of the receiver and adapt to multiuser situation over None-line-of-sight (NLOS) ultraviolet (UV) channels. Channel estimation and signal detection have been investigated according to the space division characteristics of the structure. Firstly, we adopt the balanced structure on the pilot matrix, analyze the channel estimation mean square error (MSE), and optimize the structure parameters. Then, with the estimated parameters, an analytical threshold detection rule is proposed as a preliminary work of multiuser detection. The detection rule can be optimized by analyzing the separability of two users based on the Gaussian approximation of Poisson weighted sum. To assess the effect of imperfect estimation, the sensitivity analysis of channel estimation error on two-user signal detection is performed. Moreover, we propose a successive elimination method for on-off keying (OOK) modulated multiuser symbol detection based on the previous threshold detection rule. A closed-form upper bound on the detection error rate is calculated, which turns out to be a good approximation of that of multiuser maximum-likelihood (ML) detection. The proposed successive elimination method is twenty times faster than the ML detection with negligible detection error rate degradation.