Path diversity for DS-SSMA communications in Nakagami fading channels

Average error probability and outage probability for an asynchronous direct sequence spread spectrum multiple access communications through slow nonselective Nakagami fading channels are evaluated for nondiversity and diversity receptions. Using the Gauss quadrature rule, the moments of the self-interference and the multiple access interferences are used to evaluate average error probability and outage probability. Combining the diversity technique and error correcting codes, comparisons between the uncoded nondiversity DS-SSMA system and that of the coded diversity system are shown for the Gold Code of codelength 127. Using fourth-order diversity and the Reed-Solomon code, the maximum achievable number of users is 12 percent of the codelength for Rayleigh fading, when the average probability is 10^–3. The corresponding outage probability is less than 5 percent. Performance comparisons between Rician and Nakagami fading channels are made. Since the system is interference limited, the performance seems to show no significant difference for the two fading channel models when the number of users is large.