In this letter, a low complexity transmitter is proposed for the downlinks of orthogonal frequency code division multiplexing (OFCDM) systems. The principle is based on a joint time-frequency spreading and inverse fast Fourier transform (TFS-IFFT), which combines the frequency spreading with partial stages of IFFT, so as to simplify the real-time processing. Compared with the conventional one, the proposed OFCDM transmitter is of lower real-time computational complexity, especially for those with large spreading factor or low modulation level. Furthermore, the proposed TFS-IFFT can also be applied to other frequency spreading systems, such as MC-CDMA, for complexity reduction.

This paper proposes the optimum design for adaptively controlling the spreading factor in Orthogonal Frequency and Code Division Multiplexing (OFCDM) with two-dimensional spreading according to the cell configuration, channel load, and propagation channel conditions, assuming the adaptive modulation and channel coding (AMC) scheme employing QPSK and 16QAM data modulation. Furthermore, we propose a two-dimensional orthogonal channelization code assignment scheme to achieve skillfully orthogonal multiplexing of multiple physical channels. We first demonstrate the reduction effect of inter-code interference by the proposed two-dimensional orthogonal channelization code assignment. Then, computer simulation results show that in time domain spreading, the optimum spreading factor, except for an extremely high mobility case such as for the fading maximum Doppler frequency of fD = 1500 Hz, becomes SFTime = 16. Furthermore, it should be decreased to SFTime = 8 for such a very fast fading environment using 16QAM data modulation. We also clarify when the channel load is light such as Cmux/SF = 0.25 (Cmux and SF denote the number of multiplexed codes and total spreading factor, respectively), the required average received signal energy per symbol-to-noise power spectrum density ratio (Es/N0) is reduced as the spreading factor in the frequency domain is increased up to say SFFreq = 32 for QPSK and 16QAM data modulation. When the channel load is close to full such as when Cmux/SF = 0.94, the optimum spreading factor in the frequency domain is SFFreq = 1 for 16QAM data modulation and SFFreq = 1 to 8 for QPSK data modulation according to the delay spread. Consequently, by setting several combinations of spreading factors in the time and frequency domains, the near maximum link capacity is achieved both in cellular and hotspot cell configurations assuming various channel conditions.