| New developments in wireless communications are occurring at an ever increasing rate. Demand for better and novel wireless services is also accelerating due to the fact that the typical user of the 21st century is becoming more and more mobile. As a result, there is a considerable worldwide effort being undertaken in order to close the gap between the wired and wireless services in terms of performance and availability. In this regard, physical layer solutions involving efficient mitigation of channel impairments, multiuser support, and low interference generation are receiving significant attention. In particular, multicarrier and spread spectrum technologies have already been adopted or are being considered for future wireless air interfaces. Recent evidence also shows increased interest in hybrid multicarrier spread spectrum systems.; In this research work one of these multicarrier spread spectrum systems is analyzed with the wireless uplink in mind. In particular, we are interested in analytically quantifying the sensitivity of the system to carrier frequency and timing errors for both the single user and multiple user cases. Our goal is to provide the analytical tools necessary to the undertaking of possible future design and research work.; Our research has revealed the interplay between the multicarrier and spread spectrum components of the signaling with respect to the sensitivity to synchronization errors, has established mathematical relations describing performance degradation, and quantified the effects for some particular cases which then can be used for benchmarking possible future work. |
