What is Single Antenna Interference Cancellation(SAIC) ?

Single Antenna Interference Cancellation (SAIC) is a downlink technique for Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) modulated signals which cancels the strongest interference with one receiver antenna in the mobile station (MS). All SAIC-capable MSS are less vulnerable to interference than non SAIC-capable MSS.

SAIC is primarily an MS functionality. This means that MSS that support SAIC do not require support from the network. The network provides MS statistics for both circuitswitched (CS) and packet-switched (PS) connections. The best system performance is achieved with SAIC when the uplink and downlink interference cancellation is balanced. This can be accomplished by using diversity techniques, such as Interference Rejection Combining (IRC) and Space Time Interference Rejection Combining (STIRC), in the uplink (that is, in the BTS). Implementing SAIC in a synchronised network brings the best capacity gains for SAICcapable MSS. Benifit of SAIC:System capacity in wireless networks is generally limited by the maximum interference level that the system can endure.Because SAIC-capable MSS can often use lower power levels, non SAIC-capable MSS also benefit from SAIC. This is because lower power levels transmit less interference. The higher the percentage of SAIC-capable MSS, the better the non SAICcapable MSS perform.When the percentage of SAIC-capable MSS in the network grows, SAIC starts to provide system capacity gain. Simulated capacity gain with full SAIC penetration is 50 - 60%. Single antenna interference cancellation (SAIC) is a promising technology to boost the capacity of GSM networks without any needed change in the network. It is very much in the interest of the network operator to use the allocated spectrum as efficiently as possible and to the highest possible capacity because most of the investment is done to get the licence for it. It would be desirable to have the frequency reuse of one, which means that each cell can operate in the same frequency. This in turn creates interference to the users operating in nearby places. Increase Interference causes voice quality to drop and may cause call drop. It is now a well known fact that it is possible to cancel the interference at the mobile handset side by changing the baseband software without changing anything in the network side. SAIC-enabled mobiles can work in high interference levels. SAIC-enabled mobiles need even less transmit power from the network which in turn reduces the interference in the network. Studies shows that the speech quality gain can be about 6% at a SAIC mobiles penetration of 10%, about 37% at a SAIC mobiles penetration of 50%, about 99% at a SAIC mobiles penetration of 100%.