On the capacity of a cellular CDMA system

Abstract

It is shown that, particularly for terrestrial cellular telephony, the interference-suppression feature of CDMA (code division multiple access) can result in a many-fold increase in capacity over analog and even over competing digital techniques. A single-cell system, such as a hubbed satellite network, is addressed, and the basic expression for capacity is developed. The corresponding expressions for a multiple-cell system are derived, and the distribution on the number of users supportable per cell is determined. It is concluded that properly augmented and power-controlled multiple-cell CDMA promises a quantum increase in current cellular capacity.