A digital cellular radio code-division multiple-access (CDMA) system can only support a finite number of users before the interference plus noise power density, I/sub 0/, received at the cellular base station causes an unacceptable frame-error rate. Once the maximum interference level is reached, new arrivals should be blocked. In a power-controlled CDMA system, the base station can direct mobiles to reduce their power and data rate to reduce interference and allow more users on the system. This approach is employed in TIA IS-95 with respect to the time-varying voice activity on cellular voice channels. We investigate an alternative technique where we adjust the power and data rate of mobile data users to the time-varying interference level to allow more users on a congested system. This scheme was simulated for various proportions of voice and data users and offered traffic levels. Blocking probabilities are reduced in some cases by two orders of magnitude. Message wait time, now a random variable, may exceed the wait time for a constant rate system at high traffic levels. If the cellular carrier has a maximum blocking requirement, an adaptive rate/power system can increase the capacity. For example, a base station that normally supports 26.4 Erlangs offered traffic with 2% blocking can support 33.5 Erlangs with the same blocking probability if adaptive rates and power control are used. Thus, the adaptive rate system can increase the capacity by 27%.

The throughput performances of three adaptive information rate techniques on the bandlimited meteor burst channel are investigated. Closed-form expressions for throughput are derived based on the channel model commonly used in the literature. The throughput performance is compared to the conventional fixed information rate modem and upper bounds on throughput improvement over the fixed rate modem are derived. It is shown that an adaptive technique that uses trellis-coded modulation (TCM) with three phase-shift keyed (PSK) signal sets can increase throughput over the conventional fixed rate modem by more than a factor of 3. Data from the US Air Force High Latitude Meteor-Scatter Test Bed confirm the superiority of the adaptive TCM technique. A practical implementation is suggested that uses a single rate 1/2 convolutional code for all three PSK signal sets. The use of this single code, versus the three best Ungerboeck codes, results in a throughput loss of less than 2%. An expression for the theoretical information capacity of the bandlimited meteor burst channel is derived. >

The performance is investigated of the meteor-burst channel in terms of the waiting time required to reliably transmit a message of length N bits. Two modulation techniques are considered. The first is the traditional fixed-rate modulation scheme where the modem operates at a constant bit rate whenever the channel is available for message traffic. The second is an adaptive modulation method where the channel symbol rate varies continuously to match the time-varying signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver. Upper and lower bounds on waiting time for the general case are derived using probabilistic arguments. Novel closed-form expressions for waiting time and optimal bit rate are derived for the fixed-rate modem. Bounds on mean waiting time are derived for the adaptive-symbol-rate modem. It is shown that for fixed-rate modems operating at the optimal bit rate and for adaptive modems operating at a minimum bit rate equal to this rate, the improvement in mean waiting time can never exceed a factor of two.>