Experiments on coherent multicode DS-CDMA

Direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) is a promising candidate for 3rd generation mobile communications systems. We recently proposed a coherent multicode DS-CDMA (CM-CDMA) scheme that uses pilot symbol-aided coherent RAKE, interference power measurement based transmit power control, orthogonal multicode transmission, and concatenated channel coding. We have implemented a CM-CDMA test-bed For a series of laboratory and field tests using the 2 GHz band. This paper describes the test-bed system and experimental results are presented. It is confirmed that pilot symbol-aided coherent RAKE can reduce the required signal energy per bit-to-interference plus background noise spectrum density ratio (E(b)/I-o) by 2-3 dB from that achievable with differential detection. Also shown is that by using both RAKE combining and SIR-based power control the transmit power of mobile stations can be significantly reduced. Measurement results show that the required E(b)/I-o degrades only slightly when 24 code-channels (768 kbps) are used since orthogonal Gold sequences are used as short spreading codes.