The Road to Multi-Carrier CDMA

This paper presents an overview of the evolution of a new multiple access technique called the Multicarrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA). We take a look at the basic techniques of Frequency division Multiple Access (FDMA) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and explain the two schemes Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Direct Sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA), the merger of which has led to MC-CDMA. Finally, a comparison is presented between the three proposed MC-CDMA techniques and their predecessor DS-CDMA and the superiority of MC-CDMA is exhibited through the simulation graphs of Bit Error Rate (BER) Vs Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) for MC-CDMA and DS-CDMA when serving multiple users.