SUMMARYIn this paper, we develop efficient analytic techniques for characterisation of other-cell interference in the uplink of Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) cellular networks. Heterogeneous service classes are supported in such systems with different data rate, bit error rate and activity factors. Additionally, the considered propagation model includes both distance loss and log-normal shadowing effects. First we suggest analytical methods to derive the whole distribution function (d.f.) of other-cell interference, followed by corresponding log-normal approximation introduced and validated to simplify the computation. An iterative method for solving fixed-point equations is employed to determine both d.f. and the mean and variance for log-normal approximation of the other-cell interference. Finally, one important application of the derived distribution of other-cell interference, the calculation of outage probability, is demonstrated.