Performance of forward-link cellular DS-CDMA over frequency-selective multipath fading channels

A new frequency-selective multipath-fading model is studied for a forward-link direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) system with a multi-cell configuration. In the performance evaluation of this model, the probability density function (pdf) of the interference-to-signal ratio is first derived in closed form. This pdf is then employed to form a compact expression for efficient bit-error rate (BER) evaluation. Numerical results show that more RAKE fingers are important to ensure good forward-link cellular performance when the mobiles travel through different topographical environments.