Interference cancellation technique for CDMA2000 handsets

The recent forecasts on wireless applications and services are challenging North American operators to enhance the capacity of their networks. Keeping this challenge in mind, Sprint has devoted considerable resources to explore techniques that could improve the performance of the downlink One such technique is Interference Cancellation (IC) which can be incorporated in mobile terminals to improve the performance of the downlink. The technology is discussed in context of downlink (base station to mobile) since commercial CDMA systems are mainly downlink and interference limited. Two of the major sources of interference are inter and intra sector interference, which IC technique works to resolve. Sprint had conducted lab and field testing with third party prototype handsets which were IC enabled. The testing helped to understand the performance of this technique and its impact on the voice capacity of cdma2000 systems. The testing showed that IC capable handsets would reduce the forward traffic channel power by up to 2.5 dB. This reduction in power would increase the voice capacity of the cdma2000 systems.