Digital Signal Processing 12, 262–273 (2002)

doi:10.1006/dspr.2002.0457

Multiuser Detection in Heavy Tailed Noise 1

Abdelhak M. Zoubir and Ramon F. Brcich
Australian Telecommunications Research Institute (ATRI) and School of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Curtin University of Technology,
GPO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845, Australia
E-mail: zoubir@ieee.org, r.brcich@ieee.org

Zoubir, A. M., and Brcich, R. F., Multiuser Detection in Heavy Tailed

Noise, Digital Signal Processing 12 (2002) 262–273.
We consider the problem of multiuser detection in impulsive noise
channels. Multiuser detection methods have been shown to effectively
combat multiple access interference in Gaussian noise, but are highly
vulnerable to impulsive noise common in urban and indoor areas. Many
multiuser detectors proposed for impulsive noise are based on a specific
parametric noise model. While such a detector will perform well near the
chosen model, performance is uncertain under larger deviations from the
model. Robust detectors seek to minimize this loss, though they still rely on
a static, albeit broader, model. We propose a nonparametric detector which
makes minimal a priori assumptions on the noise model, requiring only
a symmetric density. The detector is based on a nonparametric estimate
of the noise density, obtained from the observations without the need
for training data. Simulations show the nonparametric detector offers
improved performance over existing methods when the noise is highly
impulsive.  2002 Elsevier Science (USA)
Key Words: multiuser detection; M-estimation; robust statistics; impul-
sive noise; density estimation.

1. INTRODUCTION

The problem of detection in multiple access channels has received much at-
tention. Multiuser detection (MUD) techniques are being intensively investi-
gated because they have the ability to combat the multiple access interference
(MAI) caused by the presence of more than one user in the channel. At best
MUD can achieve single user performance by removing MAI altogether. Most
MUD schemes are designed under the assumption of Gaussian noise and tend

1
This work was in part supported by the Australian Telecommunications Cooperative Research
Centre (AT-CRC).

262

1051-2004/02 $35.00
 2002 Elsevier Science (USA)
All rights reserved.
Zoubir and Brcich: Multiuser Detection in Heavy Tailed Noise 263

to be linear in nature; the decorrelating detector which removes MAI for high
signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) is simply a linear transformation [13].
Impulsive noise has been shown to be the more accurate description
of reality for many communications channels including urban and indoor
wireless channels [8, 9]. Impulsive noise generally arises from transients
such as electromagnetic discharge, automobile ignition, and the operation of
common appliances such as microwaves and fluorescent lighting. Unfortunately,
impulsive noise can severely degrade the performance of detectors based on the
Gaussian assumption, warranting the design of MUD schemes for impulsive
noise [1–3].
One way to proceed is to assume a parametric form for the noise distribution,
chosen from one of the many impulsive noise models, and then to design an
optimal or suboptimal detector. This assumes the chosen distribution is a good
model; of course it can only be an approximation to physical reality. How far
the model deviates from reality and what effect these deviations have on the
estimator become problematic and we can only hope that the estimator is robust
with respect to deviations in the assumed model.
To decrease the sensitivity of the estimator to the underlying distribution one
may turn to the theory of robust estimation and use M-estimators to implement
a suboptimal nonlinear detector which is robust to changes in distribution [14].
We propose a nonparametric procedure based on the M-estimation concept
but with the noise density estimated from the observations. This enables the
detector to adapt to various noise models with minimal a priori information; at
most we assume a unimodal symmetric density. To estimate the noise density
we use a nonparametric kernel estimator modified to yield good estimates for
impulsive noise.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we present the MUD problem.
The proposed nonparametric detector is presented in Section 3 after which
we discuss nonparametric density estimation in Section 4. Some results are
presented in Section 5 before conclusions are drawn in Section 6.

2. SIGNAL MODEL

We consider a DSSS MA communications channel where K users transmit

synchronously. The received signal is

K
xn = (S)nk Ak bk + vn n = 1, . . . , N. (1)
k=1

(S)nk denotes element n, k of the matrix S whose columns consist of the

normalized spreading codes of the K users, S = (s1 , . . . , sk ), the codes being of
length N . Ak > 0 is the amplitude of user k and bk ∈ {−1, 1} is the bit sent by
user k. vn is additive i.i.d. zero mean noise. We will use the vector form of the
above model, x = Sθ + v, where θ = Ab, A = diag(A1 , . . . , AK ), b = (b1 , . . . , bk )T ,
and θk = Ak bk denotes element k of θ , so that all the unknowns are collected
into θ .
264 Digital Signal Processing Vol. 12, Nos. 2,3, April and July 2002

Classical least squares (LS) gives θ̂LS as

2


N

K
θ̂LS = argmin xn − (S)nk θk , (2)
θ n=1 k=1

for which the solution is

θ̂LS = (S T S)−1 S T x. (3)
Existence of (S T S)−1 is ensured as the columns of the code matrix are linearly
independent spreading codes. The users’ amplitudes and data bits are easily
recovered as Âk = |θ̂k |, b̂k = sgn(θ̂k ). This gives the so-called decorrelating
detector, aptly named since it decorrelates the users, removing the MAI [13].
For Gaussian vn the LS solution for θ is equivalent to ML.
Now consider the general case where vn has a density fV (v). The ML estimates
are obtained as




N

K
θ̂ML = argmin − log fV xn − (S)nk θk . (4)
θ n=1 k=1

If the log-likelihood function has a single minimum we can obtain a unique

solution by solving the K coupled equations




K

K
(S)nk ϕ xn − (S)nk θk = 0, k = 1, . . . , K, (5)
k=1 k =1

where ϕ(v) = −fV (v)/fV (v) is the location score function of fV (v). It is clear that
without a priori knowledge of fV (v) estimation of θ cannot be optimal.
In impulsive noise of unknown distribution both these methods have severe
disadvantages. First, the decorrelating detector is sensitive to impulsive noise,
and its performance rapidly degrades as the level of impulsive behavior
increases. Second, even for known fV (v), the computational cost of ML is often
too high.
To alleviate the general problem of estimation in the presence of outliers or
impulsive noise, Huber proposed the concept of M-estimators [5, 7]. In an M-
estimator the function − log fV (v) is replaced with a similarly behaved penalty
function, ρ(v). The penalty function is chosen to confer robustness on the
estimator under deviations from the assumed density. One then estimates θ by
solving



N
K
(S)nk ψ xn − (S)nk θk = 0, k = 1, . . . , K, (6)
n=1 k =1

where ψ(v) = ρ (v). ψ(v) is commonly known as the influence function; when
ψ(v) = v the equations reduce to LS.
When fV (v) is unknown one cannot be sure whether ψ(v) is close to ϕ(v).
Huber considered estimation of location in a nominal Gaussian distribution
Zoubir and Brcich: Multiuser Detection in Heavy Tailed Noise 265

contaminated by an unknown symmetric distribution [7]. This ε contaminated

mixture model is defined as

fε (v) = (1 − ε)fG (v; 0, γ 2 ) + εH, (7)

where fG (v; 0, γ 2 ) is a Gaussian distribution with variance γ 2 and H is an

unknown symmetric density. By taking a minimax approach, that is, minimizing
the maximum asymptotic variance in the estimation of location, Huber arrived
at the soft limiter as the minimax solution for ψ(v),

v/γ 2 , for |v| ≤ kγ 2
ψ(v) = (8)
k sgn(v), for |v| > kγ 2 .

The principal of the soft limiter is intuitively obvious. When outliers are
present they will be clipped by the limiter, reducing their deleterious effect on
the estimator.
Solutions to (6) can be obtained by iteratively reweighted least squares or the
iterative modified residual method proposed by Huber, which is used here. To
achieve a consistent solution it is required that E[ψ(v)] = 0. Here we make the
assumption that the noise density is symmetric, so that this condition is met if
ψ(v) is antisymmetric.
M-estimates using Huber’s penalty function have been considered in the
context of MUD; see [14] for more details. Next we consider motivations for
and suggest a variation on M-estimation where the penalty function is not set
in advance but is estimated from the observations.

3. A NONPARAMETRIC DETECTOR

Although the soft limiter influence function is well motivated, like any
minimax solution it may be far from optimal for many distributions in the
class for which it was designed. Also, its asymptotic optimality property is not
indicative of its behavior for small samples.
If the penalty function could adapt itself to the observations the estimates
may exhibit robust behavior over a wider class of distributions. This is what
is proposed here; instead of fixing the penalty function we base it on the
observations. To achieve this a nonparametric density estimator is utilized
to estimate the score function, ψ(v), in (6). Score function estimation is
incorporated into the iterative parameter estimation procedure used to obtain
the M-estimates. At each step the parameters are updated and the residuals
found, these residuals are used to estimate the score function which in the
next step is utilized to update the parameters and so forth. The procedure is
summarized as Algorithm 1.
A LGORITHM 1 (Iterative procedure for the nonparametric detector).
1. Initialization
Set i = 0. Obtain an initial estimate of θ from the decorrelator, θ̂ 0 = θ̂LS .
266 Digital Signal Processing Vol. 12, Nos. 2,3, April and July 2002

2. Determine the residuals

v̂ = x − S θ̂ i

3. Estimate the score function

From v̂, estimate the density, fˆV (v), and evaluate the score function estimate as

fˆV (v)
ψ(v) = − .
fˆV (v)

4. Update the parameter estimates

Evaluate z = ψ(v̂) and update the parameters,

θ̂ i+1 = θ̂ i + µ(S T S)−1 S T z,

where µ is the step size.

5. Check for convergence
If θ̂ i+1 − θ̂ i  <  stop, otherwise set i → i + 1 and go to step 2.
The use of nonparametric density estimates in the context of detection
was considered in [15, 16]. There, a training sequence was used to estimate
the locally optimum nonlinearity for detection of a signal in impulsive noise.
A training sequence gives a priori information about fV (v), necessary to
estimate the distribution of the observations under the null hypothesis that no
signal is present. Without such knowledge one cannot implement the Neyman–
Pearson detector.
The proposed method requires no training sequence as it relies on an
iterative scheme where the density and parameters are estimated together.
Such a procedure was considered in [11] where a set of basis functions
was used to approximate ϕ(v). Here, we approach the problem from a
more nonparametric viewpoint. Instead of using linear combinations of basis
functions to approximate ϕ(v), we use nonparametric density estimates. Next
we address the problem of density estimation.

4. DENSITY ESTIMATION

The problem of density estimation is to estimate f (x) from N i.i.d. observa-

tions, xn , n = 1, . . . , N . A survey reveals many methods including kernel and
nearest neighbor methods, series estimators, and maximum penalized likeli-
hood estimators. Kernel methods are popular because of their wide applicability
and the properties of the estimates [4, 10, 12]. Here an adaptive kernel esti-
mator is used, which we briefly review before considering several extensions to
cater for specific properties of f (x) such as heavy tails, symmetry, unimodality,
and multimodality.
Zoubir and Brcich: Multiuser Detection in Heavy Tailed Noise 267

4.1. Adaptive Kernel Estimator

The fundamental basis of kernel methods is to smooth the empirical density
by locating a kernel at each observation, their sum giving an estimate of f (x).
The adaptive kernel estimator (AKE) is defined as
 
1
1
N
ˆ x − xn
f (x) = K , (9)
N hλn hλn
n=1

where K(x) is the kernel function, h the global bandwidth, and λn the local
bandwidths. As kernel methods inherit the properties of K(x) it is recommended
to ensure K(x) is differentiable, nonnegative, and integrates to one; this
guarantees a valid density. We used a Gaussian kernel since it fulfills all these
requirements and gives good results over a wide range of distributions. The λn
are used to adjust for local structure in f (x) such as heavy tails, while h alters
fˆ(x) globally and may be used to control the smoothness.
Bandwidth selection. To determine h and λn we proceed as follows. First,
find a pilot estimate fˆ0 (x) by setting λn = 1 and for a suitable h, as will

be discussed. Second, evaluate λn = (fˆ0 (xn )/ N ˆ
n=1 f0 (xn )
1/N )−β where 0 ≤ β ≤ 1
ˆ
controls the sensitivity to f0 (x). A recommended choice is β = 1/2 since
asymptotically the resulting estimator will have a bias of lower order than when
β = 0. Finally, evaluate fˆ(x) at the required x.
For fixed λn , an optimal h can be obtained by minimizing a measure of distance
between fˆ(x) and f (x) with respect  ∞to h. An oft-used measure is the mean
integrated squared error, MISE = E[ −∞ (fˆ(x) − f (x))2 dx]. For the special case
of a Gaussian distribution and kernel one obtains hopt = 0.79RN −1/5 , where R
is the interquartile range. In general hopt is a reasonable choice even for non-
Gaussian K(x) and f (x); however, should f (x) be multimodal this choice gives
large errors. In this case, or merely to refine h, one must turn to more intelligent
methods of bandwidth selection such as cross-validation or resampling schemes
such as the bootstrap. In cross-validation one estimates the MISE from the
observations and then minimizes this with respect to h. More details can be
found in [6, 10].
Bandwidth corrections for heavy tailed distributions. Even with local
bandwidth adjustments the AKE may undersmooth and produce spurious peaks
in the tails for heavy tailed distributions. Modes in the tails are undesirable
as they produce a score function which oscillates in the extremities. This can
lead to inaccurate estimates as the iterative scheme used in the parameter
estimation algorithm will only converge to a unique minimum if the step size
µ ≤ 1/|ψ (x)| [14]. To avoid this problem one can adaptively set the step size,
µ = 1/δ max |ψ (xn )|, where δ ≥ 1 allows for a margin of error when estimating
ψ (xn ); we used δ = 1.25. However, rapid oscillations result in small step sizes
which slow convergence.
Possibly the simplest way to remove these peaks is to selectively increase
the local bandwidths. We can then correct the tails while not distorting the
estimate near the mode. First we define the tail regions as the lower and upper
100ζ % of the observations; we used ζ = 0.25. For each tail we move from the
268 Digital Signal Processing Vol. 12, Nos. 2,3, April and July 2002

extremal observations inward, adjusting local bandwidths for successive pairs

of observations. If fˆ(x) at the midpoint between the observations is less than
that at both observations a local minima is deemed present and the two local
bandwidths are increased. The correction is based on the assumption of a
Gaussian kernel. If two Gaussian kernels are separated by a distance of 2" their
sum will be unimodal if their local bandwidths are at least "/ h. The component
with the smaller local bandwidth is assigned this critical value, while the other
is assigned the critical value scaled by the ratio of the original bandwidths
to preserve their original proportionality. Should a correction reduce the local
bandwidth, it is not applied. This simple scheme produced good results when
the tails were heavy.
Symmetry. Recall that for (6) to give consistent estimates f (x) should
be symmetric and ψ(x) antisymmetric. We ensure ψ(x) is antisymmetric by
imposing symmetry on fˆ(x). Let fˆ(x) be the raw asymmetric estimate; then
a symmetric estimate, fˆs (x), is obtained by taking the even part of fˆ(x), fˆs (x̂) =
(fˆ(x) + fˆ(−x))/2.
Unimodality. If f (x) is known to be unimodal, incorporating this informa-
tion into the estimator will reduce error. To impose unimodality on kernel esti-
mators Silverman suggests increasing h; this follows from a result for Gaussian
kernels which states that the number of modes is a decreasing function of h [10].
One can check for unimodality by determining the number of peaks in fˆ(x),
should there be more than a single peak h is increased by a factor η. The process
is then repeated until unimodality is attained, with η = 1.05 a few iterations was
usually enough.
Consistency of the estimates. Pointwise and uniform consistency using
the kernel estimators can be achieved under some mild regularity conditions
on f (x) and K(x), and some further conditions on h, both of which are usually
fulfilled. Uniform consistency implies that Pr{supx |fˆ(x) − f (x)| → 0} = 1 as
n → ∞, more details and other consistency results can be found in [4, 10, 12].

5. SIMULATIONS

We compare the decorrelating detector and a robust MUD [14] which uses M-
estimates with Huber’s penalty function to the proposed scheme for a variety
of noise models. We refer to the method of [14] as the robust detector and
the proposed scheme as the nonparametric detector. Unless otherwise stated
all noise models are symmetric and unimodal, this being incorporated into
the density estimator. Bit error rates (BER) versus SNR are shown for K = 6
users. The spreading codes are shifted maximal length sequences of length
N = 31, meaning density estimation is performed with a sample size of 31. The
amplitude of the first user is at −10 dB relative to the others; BERs are shown
for this user.
For Gaussian noise in Fig. 1 the decorrelator and robust detectors perform
similarly. This is expected as for Gaussian noise the influence function for
the robust detector clips only a minority of the incoming observations, but
Zoubir and Brcich: Multiuser Detection in Heavy Tailed Noise 269

FIG. 1. Bit error rate vs SNR in Gaussian noise (left) and generalized Gaussian noise with
p = 0.5 (right).

appears linear, the optimum shape in Gaussian noise, for the majority. Since the
nonparametric detector estimates the score function it will never be perfectly
linear for Gaussian noise, leading to a decrease in performance of approximately
1 dB.
The generalized Gaussian distribution has a density proportional to
exp(−|x|p ), 0 < p ≤ 2. A p less than 2 gives a heavy tailed distribution suitable as
an impulsive noise model. In Fig. 1 we have shown results for p = 0.5. The non-
parametric detector has the lowest BER up to an SNR of 9 dB. There appears to
be a range of p and SNR which favor use of the nonparametric detector, namely
for low p and SNR, a region where accurate detection is difficult. This suggests
that the nonparametric detector is more robust in highly impulsive noise.
Next we consider a special case of the ε contaminated mixture model where
the contaminant has a Gaussian distribution with variance κγ 2 . This is often
used as a model for impulsive noise as it approximates Middleton’s class A
model [9]. Results for ε = 0.01, κ = 100 and ε = 0.1, κ = 100 are shown in Fig. 2.
Both the robust and the nonparametric detectors outperform the decorrelator,

FIG. 2. Bit error rate vs SNR in ε mixture noise with ε = 0.01, κ = 100 (left) and ε = 0.1,
κ = 100 (right).
270 Digital Signal Processing Vol. 12, Nos. 2,3, April and July 2002

FIG. 3. Bit error rate vs SNR in SαS noise for α = 1.5 (left) and α = 1.0 (right).

while the robust detector outperforms the nonparametric detector in the first
case but not the second. Which detector is best obviously depends on the model
parameters, but we suggest a possible explanation. In the first case there is a
small proportion of very large noise values, making tail estimation difficult as we
have so few observations in the tail regions. In the second case large noise values
occur with a greater probability, aiding in tail estimation and hence estimation
of the score function, leading to smaller BERs. The set of (κ, ε) for which one
detector outperforms the other has yet to be determined.
Next we consider two cases where the noise is symmetric alpha stable (SαS).
SαS distributions are a popular model for impulsive noise for which there has
been shown to be a physical motivation in multiuser environments [8]. SαS
distributions are parameterized by their characteristic exponent, 0 < α ≤ 2,
and a scale parameter σ > 0. The level of impulsive behavior increases as α
decreases. For α = 2 the distribution is Gaussian, while for α = 1, we have the
highly impulsive Cauchy distribution. For α < 2 they have infinite variance and
for α ≤ 1 an infinite mean. Results for characteristic exponents of 1.5 and 1.0 are
shown in Fig. 3. In these cases the nonparametric detector outperforms both the
robust and the decorrelating detectors. Further experiments have shown this to
be true for smaller values of α. This gives more evidence to the suggestion that
the nonparametric detector is more robust to highly impulsive noise.
Finally we show an example where the noise distribution is symmetric but
bimodal. This is incorporated into the density estimation procedure as outlined
in Section 4. The bimodal density is composed of two Gaussian densities with
means of ±1 and a variance of σ 2 = 0.01. Figure 4 shows results for this
scenario. The nonparametric detector is able to adapt itself to the bimodal
nature of the noise and outperforms the other methods at low SNR.
Although asynchronous users and fading multipath channels were not
considered, experiments show a similar relative performance between the
detectors.
To briefly comment on computational complexity, we found the nonparamet-
ric detector took on average four iterations to converge while the robust detector
took two.
Zoubir and Brcich: Multiuser Detection in Heavy Tailed Noise 271

FIG. 4. Bit error rate vs SNR in symmetric bimodal noise generated from a two component
Gaussian mixture model where the components have a mean of ±1 and a common variance of 0.12 .

6. CONCLUSION

We proposed a nonparametric detection scheme for the problem of MUD

in non-Gaussian noise. The proposed method is conceptually similar to M-
estimation in that we use an influence function to approximate the score
function. Instead of using a static influence function, we adaptively estimate
the score function of the noise using nonparametric density estimation. This
results in an iterative procedure where estimates of the signal parameters are
used to refine the score function estimate.
Simulations show the nonparametric detector outperforms a recently de-
veloped robust detector for highly impulsive noise models. When the noise is
slightly impulsive performance is improved compared to the decorrelating de-
tector. When the noise models are more complicated, such as for multimodal
densities, the nonparametric detector has the advantage as it can adapt itself to
the noise distribution.
There are many possible avenues for improvement of this basic scheme. The
kernel used here for density estimation was chosen to be Gaussian as it gave
the best results over a wide range of noise models. It has been suggested that
the kernel should match the noise model, so that one should use a Cauchy kernel
when the noise is Cauchy. However, as the Cauchy kernel will give tail estimates
that are too heavy for distributions with light or only moderately heavy tails this
is not recommended. What is needed is a method to automatically select the best
kernel. Given a repertoire of possible kernels a scheme can be envisaged where
some goodness-of-fit criterion is minimized with respect to the kernel, possibly
using cross-validation or resampling methods. The set of kernels need not be
very large but must capture the essential characteristics of the distributions we
expect, so that we should include a kernel with heavy tails to cater for heavy
tailed distributions.
As it stands, automatic bandwidth selection using cross-validation gives equal
weight across the entire density. In goodness-of-fit tests where one is concerned
with deciding whether a set of observations arose from a specific density it is
272 Digital Signal Processing Vol. 12, Nos. 2,3, April and July 2002

common to use a weighting function so that different regions of the density

contribute more or less to the final decision. If we are testing for heavy tailed
distributions one would want to assign more importance to the tail regions by
using a weighting function which is concentrated away from the mode. This idea
can be incorporated into cross-validation, producing bandwidths which favor
good estimation of the tails, possibly leading to better estimates for heavy tailed
distributions.
As a final comment we note that although the motivation for developing this
nonparametric detection scheme was MUD in non-Gaussian noise, it can be
applied whenever we want to estimate the parameters of a signal in additive
noise with an unknown distribution.

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ABDELHAK ZOUBIR received the Dipl.-Ing. degree (BSc/BEng) from Fachhochschule Nieder-
rhein, Germany, in 1983, the Dipl.-Ing, (MSc/MEng) and the Dr.-Ing. (PhD) degree from Ruhr Uni-
versity Bochum, Germany, in 1987 and 1992, all in Electrical Engineering. He is currently Professor
of Telecommunications at Curtin University of Technology and Head of the School of Electrical and
Zoubir and Brcich: Multiuser Detection in Heavy Tailed Noise 273

Computer Engineering. His general interest lies in statistical methods for signal processing with
applications to communications, sonar, radar, biomedical engineering and vibration analysis. He is
a Senior Member of the IEEE, serves on the IEEE SPS Technical Committee on Signal Processing
Theory and Methods and is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
RAMON BRCICH received the B.Eng. degree in Aerospace Avionics (Hons 1) in 1998 from
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. At present he is pursuing the Ph.D.
degree in signal processing at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia, where he is also
a Research Fellow in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His current research
interests include irregular sampling and applications of heavy tailed modelling, particularly to
telecommunications.