Synchronous CDMA for satellite frequency-selective broadcasting channels: Performance and receiver structures

The performance of a synchronous code division multiple access (S-CDMA) system in the presence of frequency-selective propagation conditions is analyzed. The bit error rate performance of S-CDMA for a conventional receiver is derived, and numerical results are given for two types of channel. Two receiver schemes suited for multipath processing are discussed. Coherent RAKE receiver is first analyzed showing a combining gain at low carrier-to-multipath ratio (C/M). A better performing tapped delay line (TDL) equalizer based on minimum mean squared error (MMSE) is presented. Results show the promising performance of this technique, especially when channel parameters are slowly variant.