Power control is provided by each base station in a cellular system and assures that each mobile within the base station coverage area provides the same signal level to the base station receiver. There is no absolute limit on the number of users. Increasing the number of users raises the noise floor, and the system performance gradually degrades. This is called a soft capacity limit. Spreading the energy of the signal over a very large bandwidth substantially reduces fading effects.
Soft handoff is provided, since the cells use the same channels.
Multiple access techniques may be used with either technique. If the total spectrum allocation is 25MHz, and the channel bandwidth is 50kHz, find the number of available channels in the system, if the guard band is 7.5kHz. The advantage is that different subspectrum bandwidths can be allocated to different users based on their requirements. This system avoids near-far effect, but cannot use soft handoff. When handoff occurs the user changes to the code of the new cell.