The performance of a CDMA system can be difficult to assess. Link budget calculations can be used to verify performance margins for a particular set of parameters, but fail to tell the “whole” story in an easy to understand, visual way. In this paper, a graphical depiction of CDMA coverage vs. capacity is shown to be a useful tool in evaluating the performance of a CDMA system. The graphical results are used to show scenarios in which CDMA can be both uplink and downlink limited. In particular,