Performance of even- and odd-degree Gold codes in a multi-user spread-spectrum system

Properties of spreading codes set bounds on the capability of a spread-spectrum system. In this paper, we investigate the performance of even- and odd-degree Gold codes in a multi-user code-division multiple-access system. Simulation results show that the odd-degree Gold codes give better bit-error-rate performance than the even-degree Gold codes. Whereas the odd-degree codes exhibited relatively marginal loss in performance when the system was loaded, their even-degree counterparts degraded rapidly in performance, resulting in early emergence of an error floor, culminating in premature system saturation. The results show that the odd-degree Gold codes have better properties that make them more suitable for multiple-access applications.