Principles of mitigation bandwidth with application to spread spectrum communication in the mobile channel

In recent years, the communications community has witnessed an explosive advancement in new technology attributable mainly to the successful commercial ventures of mobile and personal wireless communication. At the forefront of this technology is spread spectrum communication. Motivated by classical properties of interference immunity, security and fade resistance, spread spectrum communication has migrated out of the purely military sector to become a leading contender for many new commercial standards. Inevitably, the applications spawn new theoretical concepts yielding analyses that aid the understanding of underlying principles. The present paper is a tutorial exposition of one of these new concepts, namely mitigation bandwidth, which is emerging as a key signal parameter for the effective design and analysis of multiple-user spread spectrum transmission in the mobile channel.