Time-Hopping Multicarrier Code-Division Multiple-Access: System Outline and Performance

A time-hopping multicarrier code-division multiple-access (TH/MC-CDMA) scheme is proposed and investigated. In the proposed TH/MC-CDMA each information symbol is transmitted by a number of time-domain pulses with each time-domain pulse modulating a subcarrier. The transmitted information at the receiver is extracted from one of the, say M, possible time-slot positions, i.e., assuming that M-ary pulse position modulation is employed. Specifically, in this contribution we concentrate on the scenarios such as system design, power spectral density (PSD) and signal detection. The error performance of the TH/MC-CDMA system is evaluated, when the channel that each subcarrier signal experiences is modeled as flat Nakagami-m fading in addition to the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). According to our analysis and results, it can be shown that the TH/MC-CDMA signal is capable of providing a near ideal PSD, which is flat over the system bandwidth available, while decreases rapidly beyond that bandwidth. Explicitly, signals having this type of PSD is beneficial to both broadband and ultra-wide bandwidth (UWB) communications. Furthermore, our results show that, when optimum user address codes are employed, the single-user detector considered is near-far resistant, provided that the number of users supported by the system is lower than the number of subcarriers used for conveying a information symbol