On the chip rate of CDMA systems with doubly selective fading and rake reception

The bit error probability for a direct-sequence code division multiple access (CDMA) system is determined as a function of the chip rate for communications over doubly selective fading channels. The effect the chip rate has on the performance of a CDMA system is considered for both a correlation receiver and a rake receiver. Several selective fading channels are employed as examples to illustrate that the choice of the best chip rate depends upon the characteristics of the channel and the number of taps in the rake receiver. The tradeoff between the number of taps and the bit error probability is investigated for different chip rates. Additionally, the effects of the Doppler spread on the performance of the system and the choice of chip rate are considered. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the fundamental issues that influence performance of CDMA systems when employed for mobile cellular telephony and personal communication systems on channels with doubly selective fading