Downlink CDMA: To cell or not to cell

A common misconception asserts that to increase capacity in a CDMA network, one has to increase the number of cells. In this contribution, we show that, depending on the path loss, the size of the network and the fading channel statistics, the code orthogonal gain (due to the synchronization of all the users at the base station) can compensate and even compete in many cases with the drawbacks due to inter-cell interference. The results are especially realistic and useful for the design of dense small scale networks (stadium, mall...).