Investigation of imperfect inter-cell synchronization in multi-carrier DS-CDMA wireless communications

This paper discusses the sensitivity of imperfect inter-cell synchronization on the performance of multi-carrier direct sequence code division multiple access (MC DS-CDMA) for wireless communications. Time synchronization is derived from global position system (GPS) signal. However, the timing offset occurs that consists of timing error of GPS signal delay and propagation delay. The main problem with imperfect time synchronization is that it introduces interference to surrounding cells. From the results, we can see that the performance of the system depends on many parameters such as the cell size, the number of carriers and desired data rates. Therefore, we have to consider all required parameters and also the timing imperfection for system design aspects.