  Code-division multiple-access (CDMA) has the potential to support traffic
sources with a wide range of quality of service (QoS) requirements. The traffic
carrying capacity of CDMA channels under QoS constraints (such as delay
guarantee) is, however, less well-understood. In this work, we propose a method
based on stochastic network calculus and large system analysis to quantify the
maximum traffic that can be carried by a multiuser CDMA network under the QoS
constraints. At the physical layer, we have linear minimum-mean square error
receivers and adaptive modulation and coding, while the channel service process
is modeled by using a finite-state Markov chain. We study the impact of delay
requirements, violation probability and the user load on the traffic carrying
capacity under different signal strengths. A key insight provided by the
numerical results is as to how much one has to back-off from capacity under the
different delay requirements.
