OFDM, MC-CDMA and DS-CDMA are being researched vigorously as the prospective signaling technique for the next generation mobile communications systems, which will be characterized by the broadband packet technology. With packet transmissions, hybrid ARQ (HARQ) will be inevitable for error control. HARQ with rate compatible punctured turbo (RCPT) codes is one of the promising techniques. Data rate equivalent to the OFDM system can be attained with MC-CDMA and DS-CDMA by assigning all the available codes to the same user resulting in what is commonly referred to as multicode MC-CDMA and multicode DS-CDMA. A rake receiver is used for receiving the DS-CDMA signals. However, recently minimum mean square error frequency-domain equalization (MMSE-FDE) has been proposed for the reception of DS-CDMA signals. In this paper, we introduce RCPT HARQ to DS-CDMA with MMSE-FDE and compare its throughput performance with OFDM, multicode MC-CDMA and multicode DS-CDMA with rake combining. MMSE weight for packet combining is introduced and the soft value generation for turbo coding in MC-CDMA and DS-CDMA with MMSE-FDE is presented. The throughput is theoretically evaluated for the uncoded case. For RCPT-HARQ, the comparison is done by computer simulations. It is found that the throughput of HARQ using DS-CDMA with MMSE-FDE is the same as or better than using MC-CDMA. However, with higher level modulation, type I HARQ using OFDM is better than using either MC-CDMA or DS-CDMA; for type II HARQ without redundancy in the first transmission, however, MC-CDMA and DS-CDMA gives a higher throughput.

In a severe frequency-selective fading channel, the bit error rate (BER) performance of orthogonal multicode DS-CDMA is severely degraded since the orthogonality property of spreading codes is partially lost. The frequency-selectivity of a fading channel can be exploited by using frequency-domain equalization to improve the BER performance. Further performance improvement can be obtained by using transmit diversity. In this paper, joint transmit diversity and frequency-domain equalization is presented for the reception of orthogonal multicode DS-CDMA signals in a frequency-selective fading channel. As for transmit diversity, delay transmit diversity (DTD) and frequency-domain space-time transmit diversity (STTD) are considered. The achievable BER performance of multicode DS-CDMA in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel is evaluated by computer simulation. It is shown that the frequency-domain STTD significantly improves the BER performance irrespective of the degree of the channel frequency-selectivity while DTD is useful only for a weak frequency-selective channel.

Orthogonal multicode direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) has the flexibility in offering various data rate services. However, in a frequency-selective fading channel, the bit error rate (BER) performance is severely degraded since the othogonality among spreading codes is partially lost. In this paper, we apply frequency-domain equalization and antenna diversity combining, used in multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA), to orthogonal multicode DS-CDMA in order to restore the code othogonality while achieving frequency and antenna diversity effect. It is found by computer simulations that the joint use of frequency-domain equalization and antenna diversity combining can significantly improve the BER performance of orthogonal multicode DS-CDMA in a frequency-selective fading channel.

Direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) provides flexible data transmission in wide range of data rates by the use of orthogonal multicode multiplexing. In a multipath fading environment, the transmission performance of multicode DS-CDMA degrades as that of single code DS-CDMA does. Chip interleaving is known to improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of the single code transmission by altering the fading channel into severely time selective fading channel. However, this partially destroys orthogonality property among spreading codes and thus, significantly degrades the BER performance of multicode DS-CDMA. In this paper, we propose the joint use of chip interleaving and time-domain minimum mean square error combining (MMSEC) equalization to improve the multicode DS-CDMA transmission performance. It is confirmed by computer simulations that the joint use of chip interleaving and MMSEC equalization significantly improves the BER performance of multicode DS-CDMA and achieves better BER performance compared to the single code DS-CDMA using chip interleaving and maximal ratio combining (MRC).