Dar es Salaam institute of Technology (DIT)

ETU 08213

Cellular and Mobile Communication

Ally, J

jumannea@gmail.com

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Multiple Access Technique for
Wireless Communications

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 Content
◼ Overview

◼ Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA)

◼ Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)

◼ Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)

◼ Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA)

◼ Capacity of Cellular Systems

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 Overview
◼ Multiple access schemes are used to allow many mobile
users to share simultaneously a finite amount of radio
spectrum.
◼ The sharing of spectrum is required to achieve high
capacity by simultaneously allocating the available
bandwidth to multiple users.
◼ For high quality communications, this must be done without
severe degradation in the performance of the system.
◼ In wireless communications systems, it is desirable to allow
the subscriber to send simultaneously information to the
BS while receiving information from the BS.
◼ In conventional telephone systems, it is possible to talk and
listening simultaneously, and this effect, called duplexing,
is generally required in wireless telephone systems

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 Duplexing
◼ Duplexing may be done using frequency or time domain techniques.
◼ Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) provides two distinct bands of
frequencies for every user.
◼ In FDD, consists of two simplex channels, and a duplexer which used
inside each MS and BS to allow simultaneous radio transmission and
reception on the duplex channel pair.
◼ Time Division Duplexing (TDD) uses time instead of frequency to
provide both a forward and reverse link.
◼ In TDD, if the time split between the forward and reverse channel time
slot is small, then the transmission and reception of data appears
simultaneous to the user.
FDD

TDD

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 Introduction to Multiple Access
◼ FDMA, TDMA, and CDMA are the three major access techniques used to
share the available bandwidth in a wireless communication systems.
◼ These techniques can be grouped as narrowband and wideband systems.
◼ Narrowband Systems
➢ The term narrowband is used to relate the bandwidth of a single channel to the
expected coherence bandwidth of the channel.
➢ In a narrowband multiple access system, the available radio spectrum is
divided into a large number of narrowband channels.
➢ The channels are usually operated using FDD.
◼ Wideband Systems
➢ In wideband systems, the transmission bandwidth of a single channel is much
larger than the coherence bandwidth of the channel.
➢ Multipath fading does not greatly vary the received signal power within a
wideband channel, and frequency selective fades occur in only a small fraction
of the signal bandwidth at any instance of time.
➢ In wideband multiple access systems a large number of transmitters are
allowed to transmit on the same channel.
◼ In addition to FDMA, TDMA, and CDMA, two other multiple access
schemes are used for wireless communications, which are Packet Radio
(PR) and Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA).

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Multiple Access Techniques in modern
wireless communication system

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 FDMA
◼ FDMA system assigns individual channels to individual users.
◼ These channels are assigned on demand to users who request service.
◼ During the period of the call, no other user can share the same
frequency band.

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 The features of FDMA
◼ The FDMA channel carries only one phone circuit at a time.
◼ If an FDMA channel is not in use, then it sits idle and cannot be
used by other users to increase or share capacity.
◼ After the assignment of a voice channel, the BS and the mobile
transmit simultaneously and continuously.
◼ FDMA is usually implemented in narrowband systems (channel
bandwidth is about 30 kHz).
◼ The symbol time is large as compared to average delay spread.
ISI is low and thus, little or no equalization is required.
◼ The complexity of FDMA mobile systems is lower when compared
to TDMA systems, though this is changing as digital signal
processing method improve for TDMA.
◼ The FDMA mobile unit uses duplexers since both the transmitter
and receiver operate at the same time. It increase the cost of MS
and BS.
◼ FDMA requires tight RF filtering to minimize adjacent channel
interference.

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 Nonlinear Effects in FDMA
◼ In a FDMA system, many channels share the same antenna
at the base station.
◼ The power amplifiers or the power combiner, which at or
near saturation for maximum power efficiency, are nonlinear.
◼ The nonlinearities cause signal spreading in the frequency
domain and generate intermodulation (IM) frequencies.
◼ IM is undesired RF radiation which can interfere with other
channels in the FDMA systems.
◼ Spread spectrum results in adjacent channel interference
◼ IM is the generation of undesirable harmonics.
◼ Harmonics generated outside the mobile radio band
cause interference to adjacent services, while those
present inside the band cause interference to other
users in the mobile system.

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 Number of channels in FDMA
◼ Number of channels that can be simultaneously supported in FDMA
system is given by

◼ Where Bt is the total spectrum allocation, Bguard is the guard band

allocated at the edge of the allocated spectrum band, and Bc is the
channel bandwidth.
Bt − 2Bguard
N=
Bc

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 TDMA
◼ TDMA system divide the radio spectrum into time slots, and in each
slot only one user is allowed to either transmit or receive.
◼ TDMA systems transmit data in a buffer-and-burst method, thus the
transmission for any user is noncontinuous.
◼ Unlike in FDMA systems which accommodate analog FM, digital data
and digital modulation must be used with TDMA.

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 TDMA Frame Structure
◼ Each frame is made up of a preamble, an information message, and tail
bits.
◼ In TDMA/TDD, half of the slot in the frame used for the forward link
channels and half used for reverse link channels.
◼ In TDMA/FDD, frame structure used for either forward or reverse
transmission, but carrier frequency is different for the forward and
reverse links.

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 The Features of TDMA
◼ TDMA shares a single carrier frequency with several
users, where each user makes use of nonoverlapping
time slots.
◼ Data transmission for users of a TDMA system is not
continuous, but occurs in bursts.
◼ Because of DTX in TDMA, the handoff process is
much simpler for MS, since it is able to listen for other
BS during idle time slots.
◼ TDMA uses different time slots for transmission and
reception, thus duplexing are not required.
◼ Adaptive equalization is necessary in TDMA systems,
since the transmission rates are very high as
compared to FDMA channels.
◼ TDMA has an advantage to allocate different numbers
of time slots per frame to different users.

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 Efficiency of TDMA
◼ The efficiency of a TDMA system is a measure of the percentage of
transmitted data that contains information as opposed to providing
overhead for the access scheme.
◼ The frame efficiency, ηf is the percentage of bits per frame which

 b 
contain transmitted data.

 f = 1 −  100%
◼ The number of overhead bits OHper frame is

 bT 
where, N is the number of reference bursts per frame, N is the number of
r t
traffic bursts per frame, br is the number of overhead bits per reference
burst, bp is the number of overhead bits per preamble in each slot, and bg
is the Number of equivalent bits in each guard time interval.
◼ The total number of bits per frame, bT is

where Tf is the frame duration, and R is the channel bit rate. The frame
efficiency ηf is thus given as

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Examples

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 Number of channels in TDMA
The number of TDMA channel slot that can be provided in a TDMA system is
given by

where m is the max. number of TDMA users supported on each

radio channel.
Example:

m(Btot − 2Bguard )
Solution: N=
Bc

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 Spread Spectrum Multiple Access (SSMA)
◼ SSMA uses signals which have a transmission bandwidth
that is several orders of magnitude greater than the minimum
required RF bandwidth.
◼ A pseudo-noise (PN) sequence converts a narrowband signal
to wideband noise-like signal before transmission.
◼ SSMA also provides immunity to multipath interference and
robust multiple access capability.
◼ SSMA is not very bandwidth when used by single user, so
spread spectrum systems become bandwidth efficient in a
multiple user environment.
◼ There are two types of SSMA techniques: Frequency Hoped
Multiple Access (FH) and Direct Sequence Multiple Access
(DS), also is called Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA).

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 FHMA
◼ FHMA is a digital multiple access system in which the
carrier frequencies of the individual users are varied in
a pseudorandom fashion within a wideband channel.
◼ The digital data is broken into uniform sized bursts
which are transmitted on different carrier frequencies.
◼ The difference between FHMA and FDMA system is
that the frequency hoped signal changes channels at
rapid intervals.
◼ If the rate of change of the carrier frequency is greater
than the symbol rate then the system is referred to as a
fast frequency hopping system.
◼ If the channel changes at a rate less than or equal to
the symbol rate, it is called slow frequency hopping.

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 CDMA
◼ In CDMA system, the narrowband message signal is multiplied by a very
large bandwidth signal called spreading signal.
◼ The spreading signal is a PN code sequence that has a chip rate which
is orders of magnitudes greater than the data rate of the message.
◼ All users in a CDMA system, use the same carrier frequency and may
transmit simultaneously.

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 CDMA (2)
◼ Each user has its own pseudorandom codeword which is
approximately orthogonal to all other codeword.

◼ For detection of the message signal the receiver needs to

know the codeword used by the transmitter.

◼ Each user operates independently with no knowledge of the

other users.

◼ In CDMA, if the power control of each user within a cell is

not controlled at the BS receiver, then the near-far problem
occurs.

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 The features of CDMA
◼ Many users of a CDMA system share the same frequency.
Either TDD or FDD may be used.

◼ Unlike TDMA or FDMA, CDMA has a soft capacity limit.

◼ Multipath fading may be reduced because the signal is

spread over a large bandwidth.

◼ Channel data rates are very high in CDMA systems.

◼ The near-far problem occurs at a CDMA receiver if an

undesired user has high detected power as compared to
the desired user.

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 Hybrid FDMA/CDMA (FCDMA)
◼ This technique can be used as an alternative to the DS-CDMA
techniques.
◼ The available wideband spectrum is divided into a number of
subspectras with smaller bandwidths.
◼ Hybrid system has an advantage that different users can be allocated
different subspectrum bandwidths depending on their requirements.
◼ The capacity of this FDMA/CDMA technique is calculated as the sum of
the capacity of a system operating in the subspectra.

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 Hybrid DS/FHMA
◼ This technique consists of a direct sequence modulated
signal whose center frequency is made to hop periodically
in a pseudorandom fashion.
◼ Direct sequence, frequency hopped systems have an
advantages in that they avoid the near-far effect.
◼ However, frequency hopped systems are not adaptable to
the soft handoff process since it is difficult to synchronize
the frequency hoped BS receiver to the multiple hopped
signals.

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 Time Division CDMA (TCDMA)
◼ In a TCDMA (also called TDMA/CDMA) system,
different spreading codes are assigned to different
cells.
◼ Within each cell, only one user per cell is allotted a
particular time slot.
◼ Thus at any time, only one CDMA user is
transmitting in each cell.
◼ When a handoff takes place, the spreading code of
the user is changed to that of the new cell.
◼ Using TCDMA has an advantage in that it avoids the
near-far effect since only one user transmits at a
time within a cell.

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 Time Division Frequency Hopping (TDFH)
◼ This multiple access technique has an advantage in
severe multipath or when severe co-channel
interference occurs.
◼ The subscriber can hop to a new frequency at the start
of a new TDMA frame, thus avoiding a severe fade on a
particular channel.
◼ This technique has been adopted for the GSM
standard, where the hopping sequence is predefined
and the subscriber is allowed to hop only on certain
frequencies which are assigned to a cell.
◼ It avoids co-channel interference problems between
neighboring cells if two interfering BS transmitters are
made to transmit on different frequencies at different
times.
◼ The use of TDFH can increase capacity in GSM system

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 SDMA
◼ SDMA controls the radiated energy for each user in space.
◼ SDMA serves different users by using spot beam antennas.
◼ Sectorized antenna may be thought of as a primitive
application of SDMA.
◼ In the future, adaptive antennas will be used to steer energy
in the direction of many users at once.

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 Capacity of Cellular System
◼ Channel capacity for a radio system is the maximum
number of channels or users that can be provided in a
fixed frequency band.
◼ Radio capacity is a parameter which measures
spectrum efficiency of a wireless system.
◼ This parameter is determined by the required carrier-to-
interference ratio (C/I) and the channel bandwidth Bc.
◼ In a cellular system the interference at a BS receiver will
come from the subscriber units in the surrounding cells,
which is called reverse channel interference.
◼ For a particular subscriber unit, the desired BS will
provide the desired forward channel while the
surrounding co-channel BS will provide the forward
channel interference.
◼ Co-channel reuse ratio is given by, Q=D/R

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Forward Channel Interference for a Cluster Size of N=4

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 Radio Capacity Formula
◼ The radio capacity of a cellular system is defined as

◼ N is related to the co-channel reuse factor Q by

◼ The radio capacity is given as

◼ When n = 4, the radio capacity is given by

◼ The radio capacity for FDMA is given by

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 Comparison of AMPS with Digital TDMA
Based Cellular System

In practice, TDMA systems improve capacity by a factor of

3 to 6 times as compared to analog cellular radio systems

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 Capacity of Cellular CDMA
◼ The capacity of CDMA systems is interference limited, while
it is bandwidth limited in FDMA and TDMA.
◼ Therefore, any reduction in the interference will cause a
linear increase in the capacity of CDMA.
◼ Interference is reduced by using multisectorized antennas,
which results in spatial isolation of users.
◼ Another way of increasing CDMA capacity is to operate in a
DTX.
◼ The number of users can access the system is given by

◼ For large number of users and for system interference

limited rather than noise limited, number of users is

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Example

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 Thanks!

Technology changes but communication lasts.

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