Performance analysis of synchronous MC-CDMA in mobile Rayleigh channel with both delay and Doppler spreads

Rapid time variations of the mobile communication channel have a dramatic effect on the performance of multicarrier modulation. This paper models the Doppler spread and computes its effect on the bit error rate (BER) for multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) transmission and compares it to orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). Also, we evaluate the transmission capacity per subcarrier to quantify the potential of MC-CDMA and (coded-) OFDM. We focus on linear receivers, in particular those using the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) criterion. Our channel and system models allow the computation of analytical performance results. Simulations verify some commonly used, yet critical assumptions.