Blind separation of noncooperative paired carrier multiple access signals based on improved quantum‐inspired evolutionary algorithm and receding horizon optimization

Abstract

The single‐channel blind source separation of paired carrier multiple access (PCMA) signal is a key technology in satellite communications. Due to the high‐order complexity of existing separation methods and the uncertainty of channel parameters, the processing of noncooperative PCMA signals with long memory remains a great challenge. In this article, the blind separation was solved as the joint channel estimation and sequence detection, and a novel blind separation algorithm based on the improved quantum‐inspired evolutionary algorithm (IQEA) and receding horizon optimization was proposed. Considering the practical scenarios, a mixed PCMA signal model with noninteger period sampling was presented in advance. Combined with the proposed signal model, the IQEA was applied to recover the uplink signals from the mixed PCMA signals by its iterative estimation. Meanwhile, to reduce the computational complexity caused by long memory of PCMA signals, the receding horizon optimization was introduced to process the whole signal sequence as a dynamic programming problem. The simulation results verified that the proposed RH‐IQEA outperforms existing state‐of‐the‐art separation algorithms in the blind separation of noncooperative PCMA signals, with higher accuracy, lower‐order complexity and stronger robustness to parameter estimation errors.