Thesis (PhD (Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering)) -- University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [108]-116)

The goal for the next generation of mobile communications system is to seamlessly integrate a wide variety of communication services such as high speed data, video and multimedia traffic as well as voice signals. The technology needed to tackle the challenges to make these services available is popularly known as the Third Generation (3G) Cellular Systems. One of the most promising approaches to 3G is to combine a Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) air interface with the fixed network of Global System for Mobile communications (GSM). In this thesis a signal simulator was implemented according to the physical layer specification of the IMT-2000 WCDMA system. The data is transmitted in a frame by frame basis through a time varying channel. The transmitted signal is corrupted by multiple access interference which is generated in a structured way rather than treating it as Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). The signal is further corrupted by AWGN at the front end of the receiver. Simple rake diversity combining is employed at the receiver. We investigate the bit error rate at both uplink and downlink for different channel conditions. Performance improvement due to error correction coding scheme is shown. The simulator developed can be an invaluable tool for investigating the design and implementation of WCDMA systems. / Master of Science