Boosting the Uplink Throughput of OFDM Systems by Creating Resolvable Interference

Multiple-input multiple-output with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing technology (MIMO-OFDM) is considered to be the ultimate solution for increasing system throughput and for enhancing communication reliability. In this paper, we propose to increase the uplink (UL) throughput by assigning the same UL resources to multiple single-antenna mobile stations. This leads to the loss of orthogonality among sub-carriers. Thus, at the base station (BS), MIMO-OFDM detection techniques are used to separate the streams of different users assigned the same UL resources. To obtain a realistic performance evaluation, different channel scenarios are applied with different correlation values among the antennas of the users. Simulation results show that the proposed MIMO-OFDM system linearly increases the uplink capacity of the OFDM system while maintaining a mobile station transmitter as simple as that used in a conventional OFDM system. For instance, when 4 users are assigned the same UL resources, the throughput of the proposed system is 3.07 times that achieved by a conventional single input single output OFDM system.