Performance of DS-CDMA networks on Rician fading channels with open-loop power control

The paper presents the performance of a direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) network: operating over Rician fading channels. The system employs an open-loop power control scheme, in which the power measurements made on the forward link are used on the reverse link to ensure equal average performance for all the users. The system capacity degradation as a function of the open-loop power control error (PCE) is estimated. The PCE is well approximated by a log-normally distributed random variable with standard deviation in the range 1-4 dB. The system performance for channel models with different Rice factors is presented. For applications requiring 10^-3 BER (e.g., voice), with a Rice factor of 6 dB, the capacity degradation compared to perfect power control is found to be less than 4% as long as the standard deviation of PCE (σ_δ) is less than 1 dB, and increases to 18% when σ_δ is 2 dB