Design of spread spectrum multicode CDMA transport architecture for multimedia services

Abstract

We investigate a new application of the well-known spread spectrum code division multiple access (SS-CDMA) techniques to multimedia services related to the development of the next-generation wireless mobile networks interconnecting with a wireline ATM-based broadband network. Such services allow users to share novel multimedia applications without any geographical restrictions. However, since the mobile radio channel has a fixed limited bandwidth, the traditional SS-CDMA system may not be sufficient to accommodate the variable bit rate (VBR) multimedia services requested by multiple mobile users simultaneously. Moreover, the traffic load at the base station can change dynamically due to the time-varying throughput requirement of these requested multimedia services. To tackle this difficulty, a multicode CDMA (MC-CDMA) technique is proposed to provide multirate multimedia services by varying the number of spreading codes assigned to each user in order to meet its throughput requirement. In MC-CDMA, a spreading code can be used to transmit information at a basic bit rate. Users (video or data) who need higher transmission rates can use multiple codes in parallel. Meanwhile, the maximum available number of codes in the MC-CDMA system is still limited. Hence, a cost-effective dynamic code allocation scheme has then been proposed to dynamically assign an appropriate number of codes to each user for achieving the maximum resource utilization for multiuser multimedia services via the mobile radio channel. Finally, a number of real multimedia titles generated from the well-known MacroMind Director are conducted to evaluate performance.