Submitted for the National Conference on Microelectronics And Communication (NCMEC) - 2009 April 9th - 10th
IEEE Resonance 08-March 4th & 5th,VIT College India,National level Technical Symposium (2nd place)
Advent 4GMA
Dr.P.Indumathi,Prashanth.B
Department of Electronics And Communications Engineering,
Madras Institute Of Technology, Chennai, India
indu@mitindia.edu,prashanthseven@gmail.com
Abstract – All kinds of existing multiple access,
orthogonal frequency division multiple access,time division
multiple access and code division multiple access,taken
together provide plenty for resource sharing and provide
subscribers with a wide variety of services and applications;
hence it is only natural to envision a synthesis of their
attributes as a means of meeting the demands of a growing
world population. However such a synthesis is easier said
than done,and this paper outlines the evolution of a likely
4GMA scheme.
Keywords – Code Division multiple Access
(CDMA),orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM), Multi-Carrier CDMA.
I. INTRODUCTION
The primary goal of next generation wireless systems
will be the convergence of multimedia services such as
speech,video,audio,image and data. The growing demand
for access to a ubiquitous channel has made cellular
multimedia simultaneous multiple access the most
important objective of the global Fourth Generation of
wireless systems. This paper presents the suggestion of a
multiple access scheme for the fourth generation of
mobile communications,that uses Time Division Multiple
Access, Frequency Division Multiple Access and Code
Division Multiple Access. The proposed system can
support different families of users,each distinguished by
their data rate,number of sub carriers and variable spread
factor. It can also meet demands of flexibility in data
rate,and provide scalability with respect to bandwidth
using variable time slots.
Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) was
the multiple access scheme employed in first generation
communication systems,like the Analog Mobile Phone
Service,where the system bandwidth is divided into
several channels and each user is assigned a separate
channel. In a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
framework all users can use the entire channel bandwidth
and are distinguished by short and distinct time slots,
while in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) all
users can access the entire bandwidth all the time.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing is a case of
multi-carrier modulation where a single data stream is
transmitted over a number of low rate sub carriers,and
OFDMA involves assigning a specific class of sub-
carriers to a receiver to increase the capacity of the
channel.
When selecting a Multiple Access Scheme,perhaps
the most important question is the number of admissible
users per cell for a given available total bandwidth. With
this view in mind,CDMA is a potential candidate for third
generation (3G) systems,however it has to cope with the
problem of Multiple Access Interference (MAI). The
present 3G systems which use CDMA can provide a
maximum data rate of 2Mbps for an indoor environment,
which is quite less than that needed for recent multimedia
applications, that require very high bandwidth with
mobility. The most important objective of 4G wireless
systems is to take care of severe ISI,which results from
high data rates, and to provide spectral efficiency in the
available limited bandwidth. In this aspect Multi-carrier
Modulation with spread spectrum technique,known as
Multi Carrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-
CDMA) is promising for future wireless multimedia
communications.
A lot of research has been devoted to hybrid schemes
such as MC-CDMA and MC-DS-CDMA (Multi-Carrier
Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access), where
multi-carrier and spread spectrum systems have been
combined [12,13].The MC-CDMA system avoids MAI
due to an FDMA scheme at sub carrier level and also
exploits the diversity gain offered by spread spectrum
techniques. It allows one to benefit from several
advantages of both multi-carrier modulation and spread
spectrum systems by offering high flexibility, high
spectral efficiency, simple and robust detection techniques
and narrow band interference rejection capability. The
performance analysis of MC-CDMA and MC-DS-CDMA
in multipath fading channels are given in [16] and their
performance has been compared in [17,18].
In this paper a new hybrid multiple access scheme is
proposed to achieve higher capacity and more flexibility.
The scheme uses TDMA,CDMA and OFDMA to
accommodate data rates from 8Kbps to 100Mbps in a
bandwidth of 20 MHz. The data rates can be increased
further by using higher modulation schemes like 16-QAM
or 64-QAM under good channel conditions. Variable data
rates are also supported by parameters like the number of
time slots per frame,spreading factor and the number of
sub-carriers.
II. PROPOSED SCHEME
Each user is assigned a number of time slots
depending on the required data rate. The spread
factor,which is chosen according to the data rates needed
by each application,is variable for different service classes
and hence the number of sub-carriers is also different.
Then the data is spread using a specific spreading code L
and transmitted on different sub carriers using OFDM.
The chips of spread data symbols are transmitted either
Submitted for the National Conference on Microelectronics And Communication (NCMEC) - 2009 April 9th - 10th
IEEE Resonance 08-March 4th & 5th,VIT College India,National level Technical Symposium (2nd place)

along the axis of frequency over several parallel
subchannels (MC-CDMA) or along the time axis over
several multi carrier symbols (MC-DS-CDMA).
The MC-CDMA based system has been proposed for
downlink wireless access of the 4G mobile radio system,
because orthogonality among the channels is maintained
by using orthogonal codes when synchronous
transmission is used from a base station. The channel
accuracy is also maintained by using a common pilot
channel with high transmission power. However, if a MC-
CDMA based approach is used in the uplink, the
orthogonality among signals of different users is
destroyed increasing the MAI, because the transmitted
signal of each user is affected by different channel
variations [11,16]. The MC-DS-CDMA system has been
proposed for the uplink as it transmits the same spread
data symbol in parallel ,so the signals of different users
can be distinguished in the receiver. But spectral
efficiency of the system decreases and more complex
receivers are needed to handle a large number of users.
MC-CDMA is proposed for the downlink and MC-DS-
CDMA for the uplink in order to optimize both the
spectral efficiency and mobile power consumption. In
both cases, variable time slots, spread factors and number
of sub-carriers are used. The maximum achievable data
rate depends on the available channel bandwidth, as well
as the aforementioned factors.
is assumed to be 20 MHz and the final chip rate is 40
Mcps. The number of sub carriers varies from 8 to 4096
with a sub-carrier spacing varying from 4.88 kHz to 2.5
MHz. Duration of one frame is 10 ms, consisting of 160
time slots, each slot duration being 62.5 micro seconds.It
consists of 2650 chips. Each user is assigned 1 to 160 time
slots per frame depending on it's data rate.The spreading
factor varies from 4 to 32.The data symbols are time
multiplexed with pilot symbols and the resultant symbol
sequence is converted from serial to N parallel sequences.
Each data modulated symbol sequence is duplicated into
M parallel copies and each duplicated symbol is
multiplied with a chip from the spreading code.An
orthogonal multi-carrier spreading code is generated using
the IFFT and a guard interval is inserted after every
generated symbol. Figures 1 and 2 show respectively, the
structures of proposed transmitter and receiver.

2.1 Transmitter And Receiver:

The proposed system supports M different service
classes,each with different data rates Rm. The users are
assigned one or more time slots per frame depending on
their rates. The spreading factor and the number of sub
carriers are also variable and are chosen according to data Fig. 1. Proposed Transmitter
rate requirements. The modulation scheme employed is
QPSK ,16QAM or 64-QAM depending on the data rates
and channel conditions.
An MC-CDMA system is proposed for the downlink
while an MS-DS-CDMA system for the uplink, in order to
optimize both the spectral efficiency and mobile power
consumption. After modulation the complex valued data
symbol bk is multiplied with the user specific spreading
code of length L. The complex value data signal obtained
after spreading is then modulated onto a number of sub
carriers using OFDM. A guard time Tg is inserted making
the entire symbol duration Ts= T+Tg. Here one data
symbol per user is transmitted in one OFDM symbol. In
the synchronous downlink channel, the modulated signal
of K active users are added before transmission.
The receiver first removes the guard interval and then
performs inverse OFDM. After channel estimation the
output of each sub carrier is equalized and then coherently Fig.2. Proposed Receiver
re combined over the parallel sub carrier components i.e.
de-spreading of signals is performed. Finally,the
regenerated symbol sequences are parallel to serial 2.2 Channel Model
converted to recover the transmitted binary data. A mobile radio propagation channel is characterized
The proposed scheme can transmit data at rates by a frequency selective multipath channel consisting of
varying from 8 Kbps to 10 Mbps. The system bandwidth many propagation paths with different time delays. The
Submitted for the National Conference on Microelectronics And Communication (NCMEC) - 2009 April 9th - 10th
IEEE Resonance 08-March 4th & 5th,VIT College India,National level Technical Symposium (2nd place)

simulation is first carried out under ideal channel T

conditions where the noise is considered only due to d1(n)= ∫ r t c 1 t dt
AWGN. Then the ITU-R defined Vehicular A 0
propagation channel is modeled as an FIR filter whose
impulse response can be expressed as
K ℏ

P-1
= ∑ ∫ [bk t−ℏ c k t−ℏn t]c 1 t dt
k =1 0
hi (n) = Σai(n)δ (n-τi) Which can then be re-written as
i=0
with ai(n) and τi being the complex path gain and time T
delay of the ith propagation path in P path model. d1(n)= ∫ b k t−ℏc 1 t−ℏc 1 t dt
0
K T
TABLE I
simulation parameters ∑ [∫ b k t−ℏ c1 t−ℏ c1 t dt ]
k=2 0
T
Parameters Values ∫ nt c 1 t dt ...(1)
0
Bandwidth 20MHz
Chip rate 40Mcps The first term in the above equation represents the
desired signal at the output of the first user's
Data Rate 8kbps-100mbps receiver,second term represents the interference from
(K-1) users, known as MAI and the third term corresponds
Spreading Codes Walsh Codes to the output due to AWGN. In the first term, the delayed
version of the received signal is being multiplied by the
Spreading Factor 4-32 codes of other users so some amount of self-interference
Modulation QPSK,QAM is introduced. In the second term ,the delayed signal is
multiplied by codes of other users so even if codes are
No Of Sub-carriers 32-4096 chosen to be perfectly orthogonal,the cross-correlation
will not be zero and a significant amount of MAI will be
present.
In general the MAI from the Kth user is given by
III.PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
K T
It is found that MC-CDMA suffers from MAI when MAI= ∑ [∫ bl t−ℏ cl t−ℏ c k t dt]
the channel is frequency selective fading. In fact,MAI is a l =1 l ≠k 0
major factor that limits the performance of CDMA based
K
systems .This MAI can be reduced by using orthogonal
codes,but the orthogonality of these codes could be = ∑ b l t−ℏ℘ kl
destroyed in a multi-path environment. The transmitted l =1 l ≠k
signal of the kth user is given by
T
s k t =b k t c k t 
Where ℘ kl =∫ c l t−ℏc k t dt is the cross-
0
Where bk(t) is the data and ck(t)is code for the kth user. correlation between different users' spreading sequences.
Due to multi path fading the received signal will be The MAI will be more if this cross-correlation is
given by
K large,which increases with the delay spread σt. For high
r t=∑ s k t−ℏ∗h tnt data rates,the delay spread may be longer than the
k=1 duration of several chips and the included MAI will limit
the system performance.
where * represents convolution , ℏ the propagation Since the QAM data symbols bk's are independent
delay,h(t) the channel impulse response and n(t) the and identically distributed (i.i.d) with zero mean and
AWGN, with a double sided spectral density of N0/2. variance Es (symbol energy) and the spreading codes ck's
In the receiver for first user, the received signal is are also sequence of i.i.d. Random variables with equal
multiplied by the corresponding code in the receiver and probabilities, one can conclude the interference is at least
the detected signal after equalization is given by un-correlated with zero mean. So applying central limit
Submitted for the National Conference on Microelectronics And Communication (NCMEC) - 2009 April 9th - 10th
IEEE Resonance 08-March 4th & 5th,VIT College India,National level Technical Symposium (2nd place)
theorem, MAI can be approximated by a Guassian process
with zero mean and variance.
Nc Nc
2 2 2 2
σ I =[σ n N  K −1]/8π ∑ ∑ 1 /n−1
n=1 l =1, l≠n
2
Where σ n is the noise variance,K the number of users, Nc
the number of sub-carriers and N the spreading factor.
The probability of error for each user is given by
P e k =Q  SINR=Q  E b /σ 2nσ 2MAI 
In a multi-user system,the average bit error rate K is
given by
K −1
BER=1/ K ∑ P e  k 
k=0
Where K is the number of users.
IV. RESULTS
Figure 3 shows the Bit Error Rate performance of the
proposed multiple access system in a multipath fading
channel for different number of users for a data rate of 8
Kbps. The modulation used is QPSK and spread factor is
8.The required bandwidth for one symbol is 128 kHz and
the number of sub-carriers is 32 with a sub-carrier spacing
of 4 kHz. The RF bandwidth is 20 MHz and so the total
number of sub carriers can be 5000,but the number of
sub-carriers will be taken in powers of 2 to reduce
computational complexity,and this results in a limit of
4096 sub-carriers if a spacing of 4.88 kHz is used.
Thus using CDMA,TDMA and OFDMA, the
maximum number of users can 5000 at a data rate of
8Kbps, giving a maximum spectral efficiency of 2.It is
observed that in multi-path fading channels the
performance degrades as the number of active users
increases due to MAI. Even when Walsh codes are
used,which are perfectly orthogonal codes, the MAI is not
zero. Each chip of the of the PN sequence experiences
independent fading, which tends to destroy the
orthogonality between spreading sequences. This
increases the MAI and degrades the BER performance.
Fig. 3. BER plot for proposed system
V. CONCLUSION
A new multiple access scheme has been proposed
which uses TDMA,CDMA and OFDMA.It can be used
for transmission of different classes of data like.
audio,video,internet,multimedia etc. that have different
data rates and modulation schemes. The parameters of
spread factor, number of time slots and number of sub-
carriers are optimized to get single bandwidth
scalability.These parameters are chosen according to the
required data rate, the available bandwidth and number of
sub-carriers .
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Submitted for the National Conference on Microelectronics And Communication (NCMEC) - 2009 April 9th - 10th
IEEE Resonance 08-March 4th & 5th,VIT College India,National level Technical Symposium (2nd place)

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