A performance analysis of TDMA and CDMA based air interface solutions for UMTS high bit rate services

Abstract

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) has a target maximum user bit rate of 2 Mbit/s. We present a performance comparison between four TDMA schemes and one CDMA scheme that all can provide the required user data rate. Evaluation considers link level performance, noise limited uplink range and cellular capacity. Three different environments, indoor large room, street micro cell and urban macro cell, have been used. Results show that when sophisticated methods are utilized schemes based on both TDMA and CDMA access methods can provide very similar performance for implementing UMTS high bit rate services when many different environments are considered.