6. Balancing capacity, coverage and quality

Capacity, coverage and speech quality are essential elements of a radio network. In a CDMA system, these three characteristics are very closely linked. They have to be optimized together, and when one is affected, the other two are immediately affected.

For example, a high-capacity CDMA system can be designed. But if it is necessary to absorb a traffic peak, tolerating a temporary drop in quality, the network can support an even greater capacity than that for which it was designed. If this traffic peak is localized, the temporary reduction in coverage of a given cell can satisfy this traffic increase, with neighboring cells then filling the coverage gap thus created.