Comparison of multiple-accessing schemes for mobile communication systems

This paper addresses the optimum choice of multiple accessing for the emerging mobile and personal communication systems. It highlights the critical characteristics of a mobile radio environment that play a key role in the choice of multiple access and then assesses the suitability of digital multiple access techniques namely, time division multiple access (TDMA) and code division multiple access (CDMA) to meet the growing needs of the mobile communication industry. The channel capacity of three multiple access schemes, viz. FDMA, TDMA and CDMA, is compared under the assumption of both forward and reverse link power control and the CDMA is shown to outperform the other two in the mobile radio environment.