  In this paper, we analyze the uplink goodput (bits/sec/Hz successfully
decoded) and per-user packet outage in a cellular network using multi-user
detection with successive interference cancellation (MUD-SIC). We consider
non-ergodic fading channels where microscopic fading channel information is not
available at the transmitters. As a result, packet outage occurs whenever the
data rate of packet transmissions exceeds the instantaneous mutual information
even if powerful channel coding is applied for protection. We are interested to
study the role of macro-diversity (MDiv) between multiple base stations on the
MUD-SIC performance where the effect of potential error-propagation during the
SIC processing is taken into account. While the jointly optimal power and
decoding order in the MUD-SIC are NP hard problem, we derive a simple on/off
power control and asymptotically optimal decoding order with respect to the
transmit power. Based on the information theoretical framework, we derive the
closed-form expressions on the total system goodput as well as the per-user
packet outage probability. We show that the system goodput does not scale with
SNR due to mutual interference in the SIC process and macro-diversity (MDiv)
could alleviate the problem and benefit to the system goodput.
