The effect of spreading factor in MC-CDMA systems under multi-cell environments in correlated fading channels

In MC-CDMA systems, since a signal is spread and combined in the frequency domain, one of the main interests is to decide a spreading factor (SF) for optimal system configuration. We investigate the effect of SF on the link quality of coded systems under multi-cell environments. Also, we discuss the effects of radio link conditions, such as delay spreads and system load. We make an analytical derivation on multiple user interference (MUI) and other cell interference (OCI) power at arbitrary load, verified by simulation. It is revealed that OFDMA outperforms MC-CDMA with spreading under considerable load and a practical channel coder.