CDMA and SC-FDMA Reverse Link Comparison for Cellular Voice and Data Communications

This paper presents a comparison between CDMA and SC-FDMA for reverse link (RL) cellular voice and data communications. The comparison is based on CDMA2000 1x (circuit-switched voice), CDMA2000 1xEV-DO (packet data) and 3GPP LTE Release 8 (SC-FDMA based packet voice and data). We illustrate various modes of LTE system operation and associated trade-offs. For the comparison of data communications we introduce the concept of a "feasible region" that simultaneously captures the system throughput and fairness for a data system. Our simulations based on 3GPP2 evaluation methodology indicate that CDMA2000 1x Revision E capacity (defined as number of simultaneous voice calls per cell) is more than 2X that of LTE Release 8 and air-link latency of the CDMA2000 1x Revision E system is approximately 50% lower (normalized to available spectrum). We also show that the CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision A system without interference cancellation (IC) is comparable to the LTE system while the 1xEV-DO system with IC far outperforms the LTE system.