A time division duplex (TDD) direct sequence spread spectrum communication (DS-SS) system is proposed for operation in channels with Rayleigh fading characteristics. It is shown that using the TDD method is advantageous because the devices can be designed more simply, the method is more frequency efficient and as a result the systems will be less costly and less power consuming. It is also shown that an efficient power control method can be implemented for the TDD systems. In contrast to the traditional access techniques such as frequency division multiple access (FDMA) and time division multiple access (TDMA) that are mainly frequency limited, the code division multiple access (CDMA) method which uses the DS-SS technique is interference limited. This means that an efficient power control method can increase the capacity of the DS-SS communications system. Computer simulations are used to evaluate the performance of the TDD power control method. Performance improvement of order of 12 to 17dB at bit error rate (BER) of 10-3 can be obtained for different methods of power control. The advantages of the TDD technique for the future DS-SS systems operating in the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band are explained in an appendix to this paper.

A new error rate formula for narrowband Differential Quaternary Phase Shift Keyed system in a Rayleigh fading channel is obtained in closed-form. The formula predicts a non-zero error probability for noiseless reception. As predicted, the computed error rates approach some constant or floor values as the signal-to-noise ratio is increased beyond a certain limit. In the presence of various Doppler frequency shifts, an IF filter bandwidth of about one times the symbol rate is found to lead to a minimum error probability prior to the appearence of the error rate floor.