ON THE FEASIBILITY OF A CDMA OVERLAY FOR PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS

Because of the continually increasing demand for mobile communications, it has been suggested that personal communication networks (PCN) be established in the 1850-1990 MHz range. However, that band of frequencies is currently occupied by various microwave signals transmitted by users ranging from utility companies to state and local agencies. In order to allow both sets of users to occupy these frequencies, as well as improve the spectral efficiency of this band, a spread-spectrum overlay is proposed, whereby a code-division multiple-access PCN would share the spectral band with the existing narrowband microwave traffic. In this paper, we describe the results of several field tests which have been designed to demonstrate the feasibility of an overlay of this type.