Performance comparison of OFDM-FH and MC-CDM in single- and multi-cell environments

Multi-carrier code division multiplexing (MC-CDM) has been drawing attention as a promising downlink physical layer protocol for next generation mobile communications systems, because it can obtain frequency diversity effect in frequency selective fading channels, thanks to spreading in the frequency domain. Also, FLASH-OFDM (called "orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with frequency hopping (OFDM-FH)" in this paper) has been also discussed for IEEE Std 802.20. Using a forward error correction technique, OFDM-FH can also achieve frequency diversity effect. Moreover, for a one-cell reuse cellular system, OFDM-FH and MC-CDM employ a frequency hopping technique and cell-specific long code, respectively. This paper compares OFDM-FH and MC-CDM in a downlink channel in single- and multi-cell environments, from the viewpoint of frequency diversity effect and mitigation of inter-cell interference.