Performance Evaluation and Comparison between Iterative DS-CDMA and NDMA

Multipacket Reception (MPR) techniques employing either Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS- CDMA) or Network Diversity Multiple Access (NDMA) have great potential to deal with packet collisions from multiple Mobile Terminals (MTs). However, their performance evaluation in prac- tical systems is difficult because lengthy simulations are needed to obtain the packet error rates for specific channel conditions. This paper considers MPR receivers based on the Iterative Block Decision Feedback Equalization (IB-DFE) concept. An analytical tool that computes the Bit Error Rate (BER) and Packet Error Rate (PER) for DS-CDMA is proposed, where its theoretical results have a good accuracy. This analytical approach, that provides a simple and relatively fast way to compute the BER and PER performance for DS-CDMA, is then employed for a comparison with NDMA.