Information-theoretic comparisons of cellular multiple-access systems with bandwidth-dependent fading considerations

The coding performances of generic DS-CDMA, FDMA and hybrid F/TDMA systems with equivalent operating conditions are analysed and compared based on two information-theoretic performance measures, namely, channel capacity and probability of codeword decoding error. Statistical signal models for the different systems are developed, which, among other practical considerations, incorporate the effects of multicell operation, raised-cosine bandlimiting and multipath fading statistics which vary with the signalling bandwidth used. The results obtained provide insights into some fundamental mechanisms which contribute to the relative spectral efficiency among different multiple-access systems.