Joint CDMA/PRMA: a candidate for a third generation radio access protocol

Third generation mobile communication systems such as the European Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) will have to provide a variety of telecommunications services in various environments to a very large number of users. A key component of such systems will be the air interface between mobile handsets and the fixed network infrastructure, which has to be both flexible and bandwidth efficient, since available radio spectrum is scarce. It will be difficult for a single air interface to meet all the requirements in every environment. The authors present a protocol which uses concepts of packet reservation multiple access (PRMA) and combines them with code division multiple access (CDMA) to discern between source signals which were spread with different direct sequences. The focus is much more on multiple access issues and dynamic resource sharing, with further investigation on a number of physical layer issues