Performance of Multi tone Code Division Multiple Access (MT-CDMA) in

Fading Channels and in Presence of Narrowband Jamming

Khalifa Nasser K Jleta, Mahamod Ismail, Alina Marie Hasbi
Department of Electrical, Electronics and System Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
436000 Bangi- Selangor, Malaysia
Tel: +6 03 8296322 Fax: +6 03 8296146
Kjletagyahoo.com, (mbi, alina}@eng.ukm.my

important advantage of MT-CDMA gained from OFDM is

Abstract- Multiton transmission was proposed because
the associated larger symbol duration favorable to combat
the effects of multipath propagation 1i]. In fact the main
limits of the conventional single carrier modulation
techniques are the restrictions imposed by the Multipath
channel, and the receiver complexity. On the hand the
multicarrier techniques such as Multi-Carrier (MC) and
Multi-Tone (MT) can provide high data rates at reasonable
receiver complexities. Jamming on the other hand is of
interest in some communication application, and in military
anti-jam systems. In this work, we study the performance of
Multi-Tone Code Division Multiple Access (MT-CDMA) in
presence of narrowband jamming. We investigate Bit Error
Rate (BER) performance as a function of some system
parameters such as number of sub-carriers, processing gain,
and as a functions of channel conditions such as type of
channel, channel K-factor, jamming center frequency,
jamming power, and jamming to signal power ratio. The
simulation has been carried out by using MATLAB package
and the results show, that the performance can be enhanced
by increasing the processing gain, K-factor, or by decreasing
the number of sub-carriers, or the jamming to power ratio.
Furthermore, that the effect of jamming center frequency on
the performance is negligible.
Keywords-MT-CDMA, Narrowband Jamming, Fading
channels
I. INTRODUCTION
Multimedia applications of mobile communications
need modulation, and multiple access techniques that, can
deliver very high data rates, which cannot be offered, by
the traditional single carrier modulation techniques. MT-
CDMA is a combined technique between Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Code
division Multiple Access (CDMA) and it is an attempt to
provide a communication system that inherits the
advantages of both CDMA and OFDM, and provides the
new probable technique for the fourth generation of
mobile communication systems. MT-CDMA inherits the
powerful features of CDMA, which allow number of users
to access the channel simultaneously. This is achieved by,
modulating and spreading the signals with pre-assigned
codes sequences. Since CDMA provides better spectral
efficiency and easier base station placement compared to
second generation systems and beside its high
performance in presence of jamming interference. Another
very important advantage of MT-CDMA gained from very
its less sensitivity to the inter symbol interference (ISI)
OFDM is its less sensitivity to the inter symbol
interference (ISI) caused by radio channel impairments.
This advantage is achieved by using more than one carrier
to carry the symbol and then a lower data rate for the same
user data comparing to single carrier modulation is
achieved. By well-chosen system parameters, we can
reduce the effect of unfriendly channels such as
frequency-selective channels. Another very important
advantage using MT-CDMA is its spectrum efficiency due
to allowing the sub-carriers to largely overlap with each
other. Actually High Spectral Efficiency is the main
advantage of MT-CDMA over single and the multicarrier
techniques. At the same time, to facilitate inter-carrier
interference free demodulation of the sub-carriers, the sub-
carriers are made orthogonal to each other. The possible
orthogonality in MT-CDMA is over the symbol time T,
[2], [3].If the orthogonality is not altered by the channel,
the modulating signal of each sub-carrier can be recovered
exactly by the receiver [4]. A comparison between MT
and single carrier schemes was done in [41 and both
schemes show equivalent performance in presence of
multi user interference. Jamming noise is of interest in
some fields and applications such as anti-jam systems
used in military applications and in the spectral overlay of
narrowband pulsed signals over Direct Sequence Spread
Spectrum (DS-SS) transmission [4]. In this work we
assume single user to simplify the work (no Multi User
Interference) and we use conventional receiver which is
recommended in case of single user detection. Spreading
technique is DS-SS and the modulation technique is
assumed Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK), since it is
the most common modulation type, used in direct
sequence systems. The type of data mapping to sub-carrier
is considered as Serial to Parallel (S:P) transformation.
The codes on all sub-carriers are the same, in order to
obtain a high correlation among the sub-carriers
modulation symbols [5]. Perfect symbol synchronization
and phase coherence are assumed. And the fading is
assumed flat (no inter symbol interference).
In the next section we describe MT-CDMA system. In
section III we study the channel model. Section IV
provides the simulation results, discussion and section V
includes a summary and the conclusion.

1-4244-0000-7/05/$20.00 02005 IEEE. 965

Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS. Downloaded on May 28, 2009 at 21:15 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 r -@| -l|
-14 W
S: P

It
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
Fig. 1, Fig. 2, show the MT-CDMA transmitter and
MT-CDMA spectra respectively.
CI(t)

C2(t)

I
I
CM(t)
Cos(2*pi*fIT)

Cos(2*pi*f2T)

I I I
I
I
Cos(2*pi*fMT)

Fig. 1. MT-CDMA Transmitter

~~~Transmitted bandwidth
I

fl f2 f3 f3 * * fM
.1

Fig. 2. MT-CDMA Spectra

spread waveforms are scale and then summed. The J«

sub-carrier data waveform (transmitter input) is[51:
d] (t)

Ij(t)=
2jB E
n

Ij(n)pT
11

The incoming bit stream denoted by d(t) is first serial-

to-parallel converted into M data streams (Mis number of
sub-carriers). Then the data on each path is spread by
using orthogonal codes denoted by C (t).Same or different
codes can be used on each path. After spreading the
spread data modulates the orthogonal sub-carriers. In MT-
CDMA, the sub-carriers are orthogonal over the symbol
duration, and hence the sub-carriers frequencies are given
by f = f + T
h.-

where f; is the RF and T is the

symbol time, and p = 0,1,....M-l. The modulated and

dj,,PT (t-T
where the nth data symbol is di, E D = {+ 1}, and T is
the bit time. The modulation symbol Ij(n) are analogous to
the data symbol and the modulation waveform for sub-
carrierj can be defined as[5].
(t- nT)
The Processing Gain (P) is defined as P = T,/Tc, where Tc
= l/Rc the chip time, and Rc is the chip rate. The
£ t)S

S2i25
f

(1)

(2)
modulated and spread waveforms are scaled and then
summed. The final carrier waveform is denoted as S(t) [5]

where:
M
V
'i

Cos(2*pi*fIT)
It Ij(
S(t) is the transmitted signal.
M is the number of sub-carriers.
Lx] is the integer part of x.
N2)C(n) cos(2irfJT

cos 2*fjT (t) is the RF carrier for the corresponding.

MT-CDMA receiver is shown in Fig. 3. The received
signal is entered to M parallel paths, on each path we
demodulate the received signal by multiplying it by
cos 27f (t) and c(t), then integrating over the symbol

Fig. 3. MT-CDMA Receiver

Fig. 4. De-spread block of MT-CDMA receiver

III. CHANNEL MODEL

Two types of fading effects characterize the mobile
(3)

period (Ta). The integrator removes (shown in Fig. 4) the

double or high frequency tenn resulting from the
multiplication by the sinusoidal carrier signal. The
decision circuits are used then to collect the symbol
samples to make a decision and get the data symbol. The
decision static is denoted by 4. This is done on each sub-
carrier, hence Mof Fig. 4 is required [5].

radio channel: large-scale fading and small scale fading.

Small-scale fading is also called Rayleigh or Rician fading
because if a large number of reflective paths is

966

Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS. Downloaded on May 28, 2009 at 21:15 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 encountered the received signal envelope is described by a second one when it is possible to get some LOS paths. We
Rayleigh or a Rician probability density function (PDF) investigate how many of the sub-carriers we can use to
[6]. The fading amplitudes can be modeled by a Rician or achieve the same or comparative performance in both of
a Rayleigh distribution, depending on the presence or them.
absence of specular signal component. Fading is Rayleigh
if the multiple reflective paths are large in number and peofoyance of MT-CDMA in presence of single janring over Rayleigh and Rician channels
~-: I:::: I:::::a:::::.:::::::;::: --t- Rayleigh channel
there is no dominant line-of-sight (LOS) propagation path. - Jo- J.aRictO Rician chsnrtel
-::::,:: K-factor=2f Rician channel
If there is also a dominant LOS path, then the fading is ::::-

Rician- distributed. The fading amplitude ri at the ith time 10 *,__-* ; ; ,,,,,,;, , ....
.........

,, ,,,; .;-..-;-;

instant can be represented as [6]

ri = V(x, +g6)2 + y"
a
(4)
------------- . .....................---

DL --------------_
S , -~~ -------- . _ ._,

where O is the amplitude of the specular component and

--
- ____
_ _.__ _ _ _ __ __ -.------* 0 :::r:::r:s::::--Rt-----s::::
' ''--- -'''----- -r--- -- -- ------ -------

xi, y1 are samples of zero-mean stationary Gaussian

random process each with variance 02. The ratio of 0 2 3 4 5 6 7 a 9 10
SNR(L1B)
specular to defuse energy defines the so-called Rician K- Fig. 5. Effect of number of LOS paths on number sub-carriers
factor, which is given by [6]
it can be noticed from Fig. 5, that having more LOS paths
K = fl 2 (5)
2o in the channel allows using more sub-carriers and hence
more system throughput. For example using five sub-
the best-and worst-case Rician fading channels associated carriers in Rician channel with ten LOS paths gives the
with K-factor of K = oo and K=O are the Gaussian and same performance as using three sub-carriers in Rayleigh
Rayleigh channels with strong LOS and no LOS path, channel. Duplicating the number of sub-carriers and the
respectively. So, the Rayleigh fading channel can be number of LOS paths gives comparative performance with
considered as a special case of a Rician channel with K=0. respect to three sub-carriers in Rayleigh channel. It can be
The Rician PDF is given by [6]. concluded that choosing the number of the sub-carriers
strongly relates to the environment that the MT-CDMA
(= rjexp[- (r + ,82)/20r2]I Lf (6) system will be installed at. The effect of single jamming
can be neglected due to effect of the correlator and
where r . 0 integrator used in the receiver, the jamming is spread first
where I0 [J is the zero-order modified Bessel function of by the corelator over the whole system bandwidth and the
useful signal is despread then integrated over T, so, only
the first kind. If there is no dominate propagation path, small portion of jamming power will be collected by the
[I
K=O and I0 =1 yielding the worst-cases Rayleigh PDF integrator, and a big portion will be removed or pass
[6] filtered and the similar explanation can be carried out for
the multiple jamming cases. The number of sub-carrier is
frayliegb(f)= 2Lj.exp[r
0o
/2. r
.
0 (7) limited also by the interfering among the sub-carrier,
which is actually increases as the number of the sub-
the Rician cumulative distribution function(CDF) takes carrier increases and the performance degraded as shown
the shape of [61 in Fig. 6.

fRce(r) = 1- exp(-y)l[r ] [24 (8) irF

IU
pedorr,nce of MT-CDMA in pressnce of singke jamming aome Rayligh
, -------------
-
.--s
------t-------------'-- ----'
-c -s---.--- 3 Rayleigh
*---e------e---
-.5ayel gh
.
------
_
-
.................... .-
-
.........
4 . 9,Rayleigh
10
where y = (K + 22) ~~~v - -;.' --'--- -- _ ' ....... _ _ ' !

--------r------ - - q ---------;------.--------
jU
m 10
r
::
-e---
::
-
@ ::
---------'
t -
--_

VI. SIMULATION RESULTS ------t--------------:-------F------t--------------~- - ------ ----+ .-----'

1D3 ~ -~~;~~~------
It is known that, the throughput of the MT-CDMA is
--r---- --+---- --.--- -------..

------'------'-----............ ~ ------
increased as the number of the sub-carriers increased. But _ __
__------------
. .
:------
--------
- ---
:-------------
--- .--------
--- ---
-

some limits taken place by the environment on the number in'L

1u
0 1 2 3 l
I.
5 6S 7 8 9 10
of sub-carriers, which we can use. Fig. 5 shows two SNR(dB)
Fig. 6. Interfering among sub-carriers effect in Rayleigh channel and in
environments, the first one when it is difficult to get LOS presence of single jamming
path between the transmitter and the receiver, and the

967

Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS. Downloaded on May 28, 2009 at 21:15 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 The other important factor of the single jamming is its
center frequency, the worst case when it is located at the
same frequency as one of the sub-carriers [7]. Fig. 7
shows the effect of the center frequency of the jammer and
the jamming to signal power ratio. At first we have
replaced the jammer at the same frequency as the first
sub-carrier to get the worst case and then at the MT-
CDMA spectra and the jamming to signal power was the
same for both cases, and then we increase the jamming to
signal ratio power. From Fig. 7 we can easily note that,
the performance is almost for the first two cases and that
means replacing the jamming on one of the sub-carrier
center frequencies will not affect the performance. But by
increasing the jamming to signal power ratio from 1dB to
3dB the performance has been degraded clearly.
performance of MT-CDMA in presence of single jamming over Rayleigh
- J-&-- Ff4requency of first subcarter, Rayleigh
Fig. 7 ..Ef-f
.. erto frequency of t ransmdted peRat signal, weh
a-ti n=3ffrequency offcrst subafrier,Rayleigh
o-------------
-
.. . .._..._
V. CONCULSION
In this work, the performance of MT-CDMA in fading
channels, various system conditions and in presence of
narrowband jamming noise has been investigated.
Two fading channels have been considered, Rayleigh
and Rician fading channels. The performance in Rician
channels is enhanced due to the existing of LOS paths
between the receiver and transmitter (high K-factor). The
number of the sub-carriers that can be used is limited by
the chanel characteristics. The number of sub-carrier
increases as the number of LOS paths increases in the
channel.
The sub-carriers interfering also limit the number of
sub-carriers and degrade the system performance.
Increasing the processing gain enhances the system
performance.
It has been shown that, replacing the single jamming at
the centre frequency of one of the subcarriers frequencies
(worst jamming case) has a negligible effect and almost
-------.---------------
the same as replacing it at the center of the spectrum of
the transmitted signal however, the performance is

-----------
_

------- '-------__
-----
_ -_ __ _ _ _ _
degraded as jamming to signal power ratio increases.
a: s__._. .......... s.k-- ---.---5------- ------r-------
.----t,-____,___-______-
-----'---
-- ---.- - -
... .... ......
... .-_--
.-_-

.- - --
.- .- ------
-- .- -.- .-- .----

In
Fi.
8, th efec of incrasin th prcssn gai is. IV. REFERENCES
.,.,------,-- -- --;- --------;- --- --.------n----- --;----- '---- -- -- --
2, 3 A .8 9 1
[1 L.Vandendorpe, Multitone Spread Spectrum Multiple Access
7. Efec ~of frqec
Fig.~ of th .amn an .h
oeosgaoe Communications System in a Multipath Rician Fading
Channel. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular AR technology.
Vol. 44. NO. 2. 1995.
Effethoffeffenct of
Fig. Fi. increammingan the procesosinggnain
powe [21 D. W. Matolak, V. Deepak, F. A. Alder, Perfonnance of
Multitone and Multicarrier DS-SS in the Presence of
Imperfect Phase Synchronization. School of Electrical
shown. Engineering & Computer Science, Athens, OH 45701.2002.
[3] S. Hara, R. Prasad, Overview of Multicarrier CDMA, IEEE
Communication Magazine, vol. 35, no. 12, pp. 126-133,
December 1997.
[4] D. W. Matolak, F. A. Alder, V. Deepak, Performance of
Multitone and Multicarrier DS-SS in The Presence of Partial-
Band Pulse Jamming/Interference. School of Electrical
Engineering & Computer Science, Athens, OH 45701.2002.
[5] 1. Sen, Bandwidth Efficient Reduced-complexity MT-DS-SS
via Reduced sub-carrier Frequency Spacing. M.Eng. Thesis.
Carleton University. Ohio University. 2004.
[61 Nikolay.K. 2003. Mobile Radio Channels Modeling in
MATLAB. RADIOENGINEERING, Vol. 12, no. 4,
December 2003.
[71 R. L. Peterson, R. E. Ziemer, D. E. Borht, Introduction to
Spread Spectrum Communication, Prentice-Hall, Upper
Saddle River, New Jersey, 1995.

Fig. 8 Processing gain effect in presence of multiple tone jamming in

Rayleigh fading channel

the results in Fig. 8 show that, the performance of MT-

CDMA system can be enhanced and fading effect can be
overcomed by increasing the processing gain. But using
high processing gain reduces the bit rate (P = B/R) so it
depends on the desired bit rate (the application). High
processing gain will not be the best choice to overcome
the channel impairments if the application requires high
data rate such as multimedia applications.

968

Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS. Downloaded on May 28, 2009 at 21:15 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.