Performance evaluation of MC-CDMA techniques for variable bit-rate transmission in LEO satellite networks

This work is aimed at investigating the use of multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) techniques in variable bit-rate transmission over low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite channels by means of realistic simulations. It is known from the literature that MC-CDMA techniques are much more resilient with respect to multi-user interference effects in multipath fading channels than single-carrier DS/CDMA ones. Moreover, MC-CDMA exhibits a natural capability to deliver multirate services simply by assigning to each user a variable-cardinality set of subcarriers. The achieved simulation results clearly confirmed the expected improved robustness of MC-CDMA techniques transmitting multirate data streams in frequency selective LEO satellite channels, with respect to state-of-the-art DS/CDMA transceivers.