  This paper presents a large-system analysis of the performance of joint
channel estimation, multiuser detection, and per-user decoding (CE-MUDD) for
randomly-spread multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) direct-sequence
code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems. A suboptimal receiver based on
successive decoding in conjunction with linear minimum mean-squared error
(LMMSE) channel estimation is investigated. The replica method, developed in
statistical mechanics, is used to evaluate the performance in the large-system
limit, where the number of users and the spreading factor tend to infinity
while their ratio and the number of transmit and receive antennas are kept
constant. The performance of the joint CE-MUDD based on LMMSE channel
estimation is compared to the spectral efficiencies of several receivers based
on one-shot LMMSE channel estimation, in which the decoded data symbols are not
utilized to refine the initial channel estimates. The results imply that the
use of joint CE-MUDD significantly reduces rate loss due to transmission of
pilot signals, especially for multiple-antenna systems. As a result, joint
CE-MUDD can provide significant performance gains, compared to the receivers
based on one-shot channel estimation.
