Reverse link performance analysis in single-code and multi-code CDMA systems is presented. Results show that the single-code system yields better performance than does the multi-code system in terms of link capacity and signal power. This improvement increases as spreading bandwidth is reduced and the number of spreading codes assigned to a user is increased.

The reverse link signal power required for multimedia traffic in multipath faded single-code (SC-) and multi-code CDMA (MC-CDMA) systems is investigated. The effect of orthogonality loss among multiple spreading code channels is characterized by introducing the orthogonality factor. The required signal power in both CDMA systems is analyzed with varying system parameters of spreading bandwidth, the orthogonality factor, and the number of spreading codes. Analytical results show that MC-CDMA users transmitting only a single traffic type require significantly more power than SC-CDMA users with only a single traffic type. On the other hand, MC-CDMA users transmitting multimedia traffic require power levels approximately identical to SC-CDMA users with multimedia traffic.