Spreading sequences for multicarrier CDMA systems

The paper contains an analysis of the basic criteria for the selection of spreading sequences for the multicarrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) systems with spectrum spreading in the frequency domain. It is shown that the time-domain crosscorrelation function between the spreading sequences is not a proper interference measure for the asynchronous MC-CDMA users. Therefore, the spectral correlation function is introduced and, together with the crest factor and the dynamic range of the corresponding multicarrier waveforms, is used for the evaluation of MC-CDMA sequences. Some well-known classes of sequences, such as Walsh, Gold, orthogonal Gold, and Zadoff-Chu sequences, as well as Legandre and Golay complementary sequences, are evaluated with respect to the aforementioned basic criteria. It is also shown that the crest factors of the multicarrier spread spectrum waveforms based on the multilevel Huffman sequences are very close to or even lower than the crest factor of a single sine wave.