Musyoki, Stephen; Ombongi, Filbert; Kibet, Philip L.
This paper has analyzed the performance a Wireless Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) system model at a data rate of 384kbps and 2Mbps over an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel. The signal was modulated by Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) with modulation order, M=16. The performance of the system was enhanced by implementing convolution coding scheme. This study was important as it formed a basis through which the performance analysis can be extended to Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks which have data rates starting from 1Mbps to as high as 100Mbps.The performance of the WCDMA at these data rates was seen to improve when convolutional coding scheme was implemented. Since the Shannon capacity formula depends on the BER of a system then this improvement means an additional capacity in the channel and this can accommodate more users in the channel. The results have further shown that the choice of a modulation technique depending on the throughput required affects the BER performance of the system. Therefore, there must be a trade-off between the throughput required, the modulation format to be used and the pulse shaping filter parameters.