the present invention is directed to novel implementation techniques which makes orthogonal cdma practical in an a short range mobile telephone environment where significant multipath fading exists . specifically , novel techniques for establishing the time base , frequency , and power control necessary to achieve orthogonality . use of a high power sounding burst on the outbound link permits : 1 ) antenna diversity selection to minimize the probability of a faded condition , 2 ) local frequency locking at the subscriber terminal which avoids the requirement for a costly precision frequency standard , and 3 ) essentially instantaneous inbound power control based on the outbound receive signal level . this is effective since time division duplexing is used and both transmission and reception take place on the same frequency . with the short frame structure and unique placement of the sounding burst the correlation between the outbound and inbound path losses is very high . thus , the signal structure and control algorithms result in a greatly reduced signal level range at the base station / pbx to achieve high efficiency in a orthogonal cdma system . real world effects such as filtering , multipath time spread , and time base error destroy orthogonality and introduce a degree of cross coupling between supposedly orthogonal channels . thus , the system provides accurately controlled power levels in this highly dynamic environment .