Performance of a DS-CDMA system in a multipath fading environment

In this paper a performance analysis of a DS-CDMA (Direct Sequence-Code Division Multiple Access) system for mobile radio communications is presented in terms of BER (Bit Error Ratio). The performance obtained with a simulation tool developed at CSELT Labs, refers to the up-link of the considered system and is a function of the number of active users. Differential binary modulation, channel coding, interleaving and a Rake receiver have been simulated. The AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise) channel has been taken as the reference scenario and investigations have been carried out for multipath fading environments; with the aim of evaluating BER performance in an outdoor propagation channel as close to reality as possible, the one specified for the GSM system has been adopted as a first approach.