  Sparse Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), a variation on the standard CDMA
method in which the spreading (signature) matrix contains only a relatively
small number of non-zero elements, is presented and analysed using methods of
statistical physics. The analysis provides results on the performance of
maximum likelihood decoding for sparse spreading codes in the large system
limit. We present results for both cases of regular and irregular spreading
matrices for the binary additive white Gaussian noise channel (BIAWGN) with a
comparison to the canonical (dense) random spreading code.
