Code Division Multiple Access

Code division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. It should not be confused with the mobile phone standards called cdmaOne, CDMA2000 (the 3G evolution of cdmaOne) and WCDMA (the 3G standard used by GSM carriers), which are often referred to as simply CDMA, and use CDMA as an underlying channel access method.

One of the concepts in data communication is the idea of allowing several transmitters to send information simultaneously over a single communication channel. This allows several users to share a band of frequencies (see bandwidth). This concept is called multiple access. CDMA employs spread-spectrum technology and a special coding scheme (where each transmitter is assigned a code) to allow multiple users to be multiplexed over the same physical channel. By contrast, time division multiple access (TDMA) divides access by time, while frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) divides it by frequency. CDMA is a form of spread-spectrum signalling, since the modulated coded signal has a much higher data bandwidth than the data being communicated.

An analogy to the problem of multiple access is a room (channel) in which people wish to talk to each other simultaneously. To avoid confusion, people could take turns speaking (time division), speak at different pitches (frequency division), or speak in different languages (code division). CDMA is analogous to the last example where people speaking the same language can understand each other, but other languages are perceived as noise and rejected. Similarly, in radio CDMA, each group of users is given a shared code. Many codes occupy the same channel, but only users associated with a particular code can communicate.

The technology of code division multiple access channels has long been known. In the USSR, the first work devoted to this subject was published in 1935 by professor Dmitriy V. Ageev. It was shown that through the use of linear methods, there are three types of signal separation: frequency, time and compensatory. The technology of CDMA was used in 1957, when the young military radio engineer Leonid Kupriyanovich in Moscow, made an experimental model of a wearable automatic mobile phone, called LK-1 by him, with a base station. LK-1 has a weight of 3 kg, 20–30 km operating distance, and 20–30 hours of battery life. The base station, as described by the author, could serve several customers. In 1958, Kupriyanovich made the new experimental "pocket" model of mobile phone. This phone weighed 0.5 kg. To serve more customers, Kupriyanovich proposed the device, named by him as correllator. In 1958, the USSR also started the development of the "Altai" national civil mobile phone service for cars, based on the Soviet MRT-1327 standard. The phone system weighed 11 kg and was approximately 3 cubic meters in size. It was placed in the trunk of the vehicles of high-ranking officials and used a standard handset in the passenger compartment. The main developers of the Altai system were VNIIS (Voronezh Science Research Institute of Communications) and GSPI (State Specialized Project Institute). In 1963 this service started in Moscow and in 1970 Altai service was used in 30 USSR cities.