Congestion measures in DS-CDMA networks

In this paper, we investigate the notion of "congestion" in spread spectrum wireless networks, such as those employing direct-sequence code-division m ultiple access. We find "congestion" to be multidimensional in nature, but two features emerge: 1) when congestion occurs, transmit powers and cell si te interference levels increase and 2) capacity constraints are approached, Among Ether measures, we focus on a particular measure, lambda, which is i mmediately of interest, since lambda < 1 is the condition for network, feas ibility. We relate lambda both to the "power warfare'' that arises as "capa city limits" are approached, and to the level of traffic in the network, wh ere we consider traffic in regions ranging from local (single cells) to glo bal (the whole network.