Interference Modelling in DS/CDMA Cellular Systems Operating in a General Fading Environment

Multiple access interference and the mobile radio environment are the primary limitations on the performance of DS/CDMA cellular systems. This paper presents the analysis of a DS/CDMA cellular system operating in a “general” fading environment. In particular the issues of signal fading, multiple access interference, and power control are addressed. A computationally efficient statistical method is used in the estimation of system performance. It is assumed that the variability of each received signal can be represented by fast Nakagami_m fading plus slower log-normal shadowing. Average bit-error-rate (BER) and outage probability are estimated as system performance indicators. The analysis shows, that as the variability of the fast fading of the received signal reduces, the performance of the system improves. However, when the signal undergoes both fast fading and shadowing, it is largely the shadowing that determines system performance. Use of forward link power control (that compensates for the variability due to shadowing) results in minimal performance improvement. However, in the reverse link significant improvement in performance can be achieved using a similar power control scheme.