The higher the spreading factor the higher the coding gain.

It gives better sensitivity at expense of lower data rates. Low spreading factor requires more power to accomplish a satisfactory bit error rate. This is all under the usual restriction of a given bandwidth. CDMA builds the recovered data bit by correlating chips of higher rate data. The high rate data in this case is the the unique spreading psuedo random sequence that is exclusived OR'd with the original true data bit. In CDMA, much of the 'noise' in the signal to noise ratio is uncorrelated noise from other users on the RF channel. Traditional way of specifying sensitivity as uV's for a given S/N ratio doesn't have much meaning in CDMA shared RF channel. Other user's raise the noise floor of the communications channel. Low spreading factor (high real data rate) quickly falls apart as more user access the channel. With only 4 to 16 spreading chips to correlate it becomes hard to distinguish a given user's original data from others.

The answer is embedded in the "good old" Claude Shannon's formula: Bit Rate = Bandwidth x log2(1+C/I), where C/I is the carrier-to-interference ratio. Keeping C/I constant, it is fairly obvious that the bit rate is linearly proportional to the bandwidth.

In a single carrier mode of operation in WCDMA, all services are transmitted over the air occupying the same 5 MHz bandwidth. The relation between WCDMA bandwidth and User Bitrate is the spreading factor: Symbol Rate per one physical channel (Rs) = 3,84 Mcps / SF Symbol Rate in HSDPA (Hs) = Rs x Number of Codes Bit Rate in HSDPA = Hs x bit per symbol QPSK = 2 bits per symbol 16QAM = 4 bits per symbol 64QAM = 6 bits per symbol For Instance: SF=16 (this is the spreading factor for the HSDPA channel) Rs = 3,84 / 16 = 0,24 Msps In case of 64QAM (6 bits per symbol),

HSDPA Bit Rate 15 codes = 0,24 x 15 x 6 = 21,6 Mbps So we can say that in order to reach 21 Mbps, 15 codes and 64QAM are required. Each service requires a specific bandwidth and then a specific SF: Voice AMR 12,2kbps - SF=64 in UL and SF=128 in DL Voice AMR 4,75kbps - SF=128 in UL and SF=256 in DL If Videocall is carrier out over CS57 - SF=16 in UL and SF=32 in DL As Philippe says, the use of more than 1 carrier in WCDMA is linear. If you get with one carrier, for instance, 7Mbps, you get 14Mbps with 2 carriers in the same situation.

Dear, CS (Voice & Video) are carried over R99, and SF is used to assign bit rate, while in HSDPA, HS Channels are introduced, along with higher modulation rate 16-QAM, lower TTI, Fast Scheduling. user can reach 14.4 Mbps if 15 HS-PDSCH code are assigned to him. (release 5)

1 Frame = 10 ms = 5 sub frames 1 Sub frame = 2 ms = 3 slots 1 slot = 2560 symbols So, 1 frame carries 5*3*2560 = 38400 chips/10ms. (ms = millisecond)

UMTS supports 3.84 MCPS (Mega chips / sec)

So 3840000 chips /s

3840000/100 = 38400 chips / 10ms = 38400/frame 38400/5 = 7680 chips/2ms = 7680 chips/sub frame 7680/3 = 2560 chips/slots That means in a UMTS system, in every slot; 2560 chips must be sent.

To achieve maximum data rate we use 16 QAM with spreading factor 16 and assuming that no redundancy bit is added because of ideal condition.

The below calculation is done for 1 pdsch code.

2560 chips / 16 = 160 symbols / slot (de-spreading)

160 X 4 = 640 bits /slots (demodulation) 640 X 3 = 1920 bits/sub frame = 1920 bits per 2ms 1920 X 5 = 9600 bits / frame = 9600 bits per 10 ms 9600 X 100 = 960000 bits per second Hence, per pdsch code we can achieve 960000 bits per second

We have 15 such pdsch codes available.

So, If all the 15 codes are assigned to a single UE then max DL data rate per UE is (960000X15) = 14400000 bits = 14.4 Mbps