Spectral efficiency for a hybrid DS/FH code-division multiple-access system in cellular mobile radio

The spectral efficiency of a hybrid cellular direct-sequence/frequency hopping code-division muItiple-access (DS/FH-CDMA) system operating in a Rayleigh-fading environment is examined. In this work, spectral efficiency is evaluated in terms of the theoretically achievable channel capacity (in the Shannon sense) per user, on the condition that this is estimated in an average sense. The analysis covers the downlink assuming a static model of operation and a direct-sequence/slow-frequency hopping (DS/SFH) as well as a direct-sequence/fast-frequency hopping (DS/FFH) scheme. As it is shown, the spectral efficiency of cellular DS/FFH-CDMA operating in a Rayleigh-fading environment is greater than that of broad-band DS- and DS/SFH-CDMA systems operating under normalized conditions. This is justified by the combination of path-diversity reception as achieved by conventional coherent RAKE receivers and the frequency diversity that is inherently present in FFH transmission.