  We address the problem of increasing the sum rate in a multiple-access system
from [1] for small number of users. We suggest an improved signal-code
construction in which in case of a small number of users we give more resources
to them. For the resulting multiple-access system a lower bound on the relative
sum rate is derived. It is shown to be very close to the maximal value of
relative sum rate in [1] even for small number of users. The bound is obtained
for the case of decoding by exhaustive search. We also suggest
reduced-complexity decoding and compare the maximal number of users in this
case and in case of decoding by exhaustive search.
