Potential of the GSM air interface to support CDMA operation

The ongoing development of third generation systems sets the path for evolu tion of the existing second generation systems. Important issues are the ne ed for compatibility and the establishment of a path of migration from the current operative mobile systems. This paper considers the feasibility of s upporting CDMA capabilities within the GSM air interface in order to provid e UMTS services. It produces performance estimates for two specific example s: Joint Detection CDMA channels, and Multicarrier DS-CDMA channels. It is shown that a number of advantages can be obtained by using a hybrid CDMA sc heme.