Aims to edit the ensemble of the contributions and research results in this field that have been presented during the 5th International Workshop on Multi-Carrier Spread-Spectrum (MC-SS 2005), held in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

This book provides the proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Multi-Carrier Spread Spectrum (MC-SS 2007), 7-9 May 2007, held in Herrsching, Germany. The book aims to edit the ensemble of the newest contributions and research results in this new field. The book presents comprehensive state-of-the-art articles about multi-carrier spread spectrum techniques, and discusses multi-carrier spread spectrum techniques.

With the rapidly increasing penetration of laptop computers and mobile phones, which are primarily used by mobile users to access Internet s- vices like e-mail and World Wide Web (WWW) access, support of Internet services in a mobile environment is an emerging requirement. Wireless n- works have been used for communication among fully distributed users in a multimedia environment that has the needs to provide real-time bursty traffic (such as voice or video) and data traffic with excellent reliability and service quality. To satisfy the huge wireless multimedia service demand and improve the system performance, efficient channel access methods and analytical methods must be provided. In this way very accurate models, that faithfully reproduce the stochastic behavior of multimedia wireless communication and computer networks, can be constructed. Most of these system models are discrete-time queueing systems. Queueing networks and Markov chains are commonly used for the p- formance and reliability evaluation of computer, communication, and m- ufacturing systems. Although there are quite a few books on the individual topics of queueing networks and Markov chains, we have found none that covers the topics of discrete-time and continuous-time multichannel mul- traffic queueing networks. On the other hand, the design and development of multichannel mul- hop network systems and interconnected network systems or integrated n- works of multimedia traffic require not only such average performance m- sures as the throughput or packet delay but also higher moments of traffic departures and transmission delay.

Multi-Carrier Spread-Spectrum has been deeply studied and new alternative solutions have been proposed. This book edits the newest contributions and research results in this new field presented at the Third International Workshop on MC-SS & Related Topics, held in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

Frequency spectrum is a limited and valuable resource for wireless communications. A good example can be observed among network operators in Europe for the prices to pay for UMTS-frequency bands. Therefore, the first goal when designing future wireless communication systems (e.g. 4G - fourth generation) has to be the increase in spectral efficiency. The development in digital communications in the past years has enabled efficient modulation and coding techniques for robust and spectral efficient data, speech, audio and video transmission. These are the multi-carrier modulation (e.g. OFDM) and the spread spectrum technique (e.g. DS-CDMA), where OFDM was chosen for broadcast applications (DVB, DAB) as well as for broadband wireless indoor standards (ETSI HIPERLAN-II, IEEE-802.11) and the DS-CDMA was selected in mobile communications (IS-95, third generation mobile radio systems world wide, UMTS/IMT 2000). Since 1993 various combinations of multi-carrier (MC) modulation and the spread spectrum (SS) technique have been introduced and the field of MC-SS communications has become an independent and important research topic with increasing activities. New application fields have been proposed such as high rate cellular mobile, high rate wireless indoor and LMDS. It has been shown that MC-SS offers the high spectral efficiency, robustness and flexibility that is required for the next generation systems. Meanwhile, different alternative hybrid schemes such as OFDM/OFDMA, MC-TDMA, etc. have been deeply analysed and adopted in different international standards (ETSI-BRAN, IEEE-802 & MMAC). Multi-Carrier & Spread-Spectrum: Analysis of Hybrid Air Interfaces draws together all of the above mentioned hybrid schemes therefore providing a greatly needed resource for system engineers, telecommunication designers and researchers in order to enable them to develop, build and deploy several schemes based on MC-transmission for the next generation systems (which will be an integration of broadband multimedia services covering both 4G mobile and fixed wireless systems). * Offers a complete treatment of multi-carrier, spread-spectrum (SS) and time division multiplexing (TDM) techniques * Provides an in-depth insight into hybrid multiple access techniques based on multi-carrier (MC) transmission * Presents numerous hybrid multiple access and air interface architectures including OFDM/CDMA, MC-CDMA, MC-DS-CDMA and MT-CDMA * Covers new techniques such as space-time coding and software radio Telecommunications engineers, hardware & software system designers and researchers as well as students, lecturers and technicians will all find this an invaluable addition to their bookshelf.