We present a new framework for reduced-dimension multiuser detection (RD-MUD) that trades off complexity for bit-error-rate (BER) performance. This approach can significantly reduce the number of matched filter branches required by classic multiuser detection designs. We show that the RD-MUD can perform similarly to the linear MUD detector when M is sufficiently large relative to N and K, where N and K are the number of total and active users, respectively. We also study the inherent RD-MUD tradeoff between complexity (the number of correlating signals) and BER performance. This leads to a new notion of approximate sufficient statistics, whereby sufficient statistics are approximated to reduce complexity at the expense of some BER performance loss.1展开▼