CDMA (IS-95,99) : CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access)

CDMA (IS-95,99)
Code Division Multiple Access or CDMA was introduced as a cellular standard by QUALCOMM, Inc., in
1989. Based on technology initially discovered during WorldWar II ,CDMA was accepted as an alternative
North American digital cellular standard (IS-95) by the TIA in 1992 and has undergone development in the
standards process since then. At year-end 1995 there were still no commercially-available CDMA systems.
The basic idea of spread spectrum is to rely on something other than time division or geographic
attenuation of a signal to prevent cochannel interference. This makes sense because there are general
tendencies of signal strength attenuation, but no absolute rules; topography, weather, foliage, presence of
reflectors, etc., are all major factors determining the strength of a received signal.
CDMA addresses the two basic problems with radio systems–multipath fading and interference from
others in the cellular environment. Both of these challenges are mitigated via the frequency diversity
introduced by the wide bandwidth used in CDMA. No single source of interference can impact more than
a subset of the spread spectrum in use. CDMA redistributes a base signal across a broad bandwidth under
control of digital circuitry.
In CDMA, average interference limits system performance rather than worst-case interference as in
FDMA- and TDMA-based systems. Thus, CDMA systems reuse the same frequency in neighboring cells.
It’s a good thing, because CDMA RF channels are large–1.25 MHz–and thus there are relatively few of
them.
Cellular CDMA systems code speech in a compact 8 Kbps format and transmit a basic data rate of 9600
bps in a spread format of 1.2288 Mbps called "Mchips per second." This spreading factor of 128 resulting in
a coding gain of 21 dB, which combats many of the vagaries of RF transmission. The spreading mechanism
differs between the forward and reverse channels because the capabilities of transmitter and receiver differ
on the mobile and system sides of the airlink. Different frequencies are used in forward and reverse
directions also, for a limited form of frequency division duplexed or FDD operation.
CDMA uses a soft base-controlled handoff for mobiles transitioning between cells. This improves the
quality of service for both voice and data applications. CDMA enjoys somewhat reduced complexity in the
network–frequency planning and cell handoff processes–for somewhat increased complexity on the radio
link side of the system. This is an interesting approach.
Estimating the capacity of CDMA systems objectively is difficult because of the number of assumptions
required. QUALCOMM claims a relative capacity of 14 times AMPS capacity [VITE95]. A better estimate
might be half that value.
The size of CDMA channels (1.25 MHz) will make migration to dual mode cellular operation (i.e., CDMA
and AMPS) more of a quantum leap than an evolutionary process. How this will be accomplished–removing
large numbers of AMPS channels from AMPS service to CDMA service–in the face of already overloaded
systems will be an interesting challenge to the CDMA service providers.
Data services in CDMA systems have been specified for facsimile and asynchronous data applications.
Both of these are included in the IS-99 standard and are circuit-switched in nature. A packet-switched
service has been defined for CDMA systems with IS-667. Current 14.4 Kbps data rates could be augmented
under a proposed Extended CDMA specification to support 76.8 Kbps data streams.
CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access)
1. Divide each bit into M slots. All transmissions start at the beginning of a bit frame, which consists of M slots.
2. Each sender/receiver pair is given a code word, cm, selected from the set of orthogonal code words of length
M at the time of connection.
3. For each bit, bi, that a sender needs to transmit, the sender will transmit bi * cmj over the next M slots
where 1 ≤ j ≤ M.
4. The receiver will receive the sum of all coded bits, T, sent over a bit frame period, and perform a (dot
product) calculation: bi = T mc = (1/M) 1≤j≤M Tj cmj which extracts the transmitted bit on the
receiver’s “code channel” from the background of transmissions from other wireless units.
Example
If M =4, the orthogonal code vectors consist of the following: c1 = (1, 1, 1, 1), c2 = (1, 1, -1, -1),
c3 = (1, -1, -1, 1), and c4 = (1, -1, 1, -1). Suppose that there are three active connections using c1, c2, and c4 and
sending the bit patterns (1, 0, 1), (1, 1, 0), and (0, 0, 1) respectively. (Note! 0’s will be sent as the 1’s complement
of a 1 bit – or effectively by multiplying a (-1) by the code vector).
In the diagram above, the left-hand side shows the coded form of the messages sent by the three senders and the
summed output that would be received by each of the receiving units. On the right-hand side, the code vector for
each of the three receivers is prominently shown superimposed upon the summed signal that is received and the
dot product of the summed received bits with the code vector is depicted for each for each receiver. When these
results are divided by M = 4 (the number of slots in a bit-frame) the original message on each channel is obtained.
In constructing this example, it was assumed that all of the senders and receivers were synchronized to recognize
the same bit frame start and the power level of each signal was the same. In practice there are usually 64 to 128
“chips” to a frame (M = 64 or M = 128) and only the sender and receiver are synchronized (by having the sender
transmit a predefined chip sequence that allows the receiver to “lock onto”). All other transmissions are then seen
as random noise, but the algorithm still works well at extracting the transmitted message from this background
“noise”.
CDMA assumes an environment of a base station with numerous mobile units distributed within the cell at various
distances from the base station. To equalize the signal strength of the various units, a rule of thumb is to transmit
at a power that is inversely proportional to the power in the signal received from the base station – the weaker the
signal from the base station, the more power the station should use for transmission. Implementation of CDMA is
more complicated than the simplified example illustrated above, but it also has desirable attributes for 3G wireless
systems. Principally, it normally operates in a band of 1.25 Mhz (versus 30 khz for D-AMPS and 200 khz for
DSM) and supports many more users in that band than either of the two other systems, with at least as much and
usually more bandwidth for each individual user.
Code Division Multiple Access

There is no restriction on time and frequency in this scheme. All the users can transmit at all
times and at all frequencies. Because users are isolated by code, they can share the same
carrier frequency, eliminating the frequency reuse problem encountered in other technologies.
CDMA
A comparative study between the above three access technologies with respect to time and
frequency is as shown below.
Comparison of cellular access schemes
Code Division Multiple Access

The CDMA technology can be implemented by spreading the spectrum which can be done in
the following two ways
• Direct Sequence Spread Sprectrum - DSSS CDMA
• Frequency Hopping - FH CDMA
Evolution of Cellular Systems

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CDMA (IS-95,99)

CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access)

Code Division Multiple Access

Code Division Multiple Access

Evolution of Cellular Systems

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