On the Design of Group Orthogonal MC-CDMA Systems

This paper presents some insights into the design of the recently proposed group-orthogonal multi-carrier code-division multiple-access (GO-MC-CDMA) technique. A new theoretical derivation for the bit error rate (BER) performance when using maximum likelihood (ML) detection in correlated channels is presented and validated. This expression reveals important aspects to be taken into account when partitioning the available subcarriers into groups. It also shows that for large signal-to-noise ratios, the spreading codes do not affect the performance of the system. A design example is given using parameters aiming at the next generation of wireless systems