Error probability of multicell CDMA over frequency selective fading channels with power control error

It is well known that power control is critical in CDMA mobile systems. In this paper, the error probability of a multicell CDMA system, operating with imperfect power control over a frequency selective multipath fading channel, is derived. Asymptotic expressions (for high signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios) of the error probability show that the use of diversity combining exacerbates the effect of the power control error (PCE), since the power control is identical on each diversity channel; also, the error probability increases exponentially with PCE, while (asymptotically) increasing linearly with the number of users and decreasing inverse linearly with the processing gain. In addition to the asymptotic results mentioned above, both Chernoff bounds on, and approximations to, the error probability are found. Numerical results reveal the tightness of the Chernoff bounds, and show that the approximations are actually much tighter than the bounds, at least for PCE standard deviations of 1.5 dB or less.