Performance Study of Hybrid Spread Spectrum Techniques

This thesis focuses on the performance analysis of hybrid direct sequence/slow frequency hopping (DS/SFH) and hybrid direct sequence/fast frequency hopping (DS/FFH) systems under multi-user interference and Rayleigh fading. First, we analyze the performance of direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS), slow frequency hopping (SFH) and fast frequency hopping (FFH) systems for varying processing gains under interference environment assuming equal bandwidth constraint with Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation and synchronous system. After thorough literature survey, we show that hybrid DS/FFH systems outperform both SFH and hybrid DS/SFH systems under Rayleigh fading and multi-user interference. Also, both hybrid DS/SFH and hybrid DS/FFH show performance improvement with increasing spreading factor and decreasing number of hopping frequencies

Low Probability of Intercept Waveforms via Intersymbol Dither Performance under Multipath Conditions

This thesis examines the effects of multipath interference on Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) waveforms generated using intersymbol dither. LPI waveforms are designed to be difficult for non-cooperative receivers to detect and manipulate, and have many uses in secure communications applications. In prior research, such a waveform was designed using a dither algorithm to vary the time between the transmission of data symbols in a communication system. This work showed that such a method can be used to frustrate attempts to use non-cooperative receiver algorithms to recover the data. This thesis expands on prior work by examining the effects of multipath interference on cooperative and non-cooperative receiver performance to assess the above method’s effectiveness using a more realistic model of the physical transmission channel. Both two and four ray multipath interference channel models were randomly generated using typical multipath power profiles found in existing literature. Different combinations of maximum allowable symbol delay, pulse shapes and multipath channels were used to examine the bit error rate performance of 1) a Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) cooperative equalizer structure with prior knowledge of the dither pattern and 2) a Constant Modulus Algorithm (CMA) non-cooperative equalizer. Cooperative MMSE equalization resulted in approximately 6-8 dB BER performance improvement in Eb/No over non-cooperative equalization, and for a full range symbol timing dither non-cooperative equalization yields a theoretical BER limit of Pb=10−1. For 50 randomly generated multipath channels, six of the four ray channels and 15 of the two ray channels exhibited extremely poor equalization results, indicating a level of algorithm sensitivity to multipath conditions

Time domain filtered cross spectral density detection and direction finding of spread spectrum signals, and implementation using acousto-optic correlation

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/832 on 15.02.2017 by CS (TIS)This thesis presents a technique for the detection of spread spectrum signals, of arbitrary form, even when the signal power spectral density (PSD) is well below the surveillance receiver noise spectral density, using a pair of antennas with broadband (I GHz or more) receivers. Cross correlating the outputs of two receivers, spatially separated by a distance of the order of one metre or more, produces a cross correlation function (ccf) in which the noise components are spread uniformly over the whole width while the signal component, the narrow autocorrelation function (act) of the spread spectrum signal, is concentrated near to the centre. The acf is displaced from the centre of the ccf by a small time shift equal to the time difference of arrival of the signal at the two antennas. A simple time domain filter can select a narrow centre portion of the ccf, rejecting the remainder which contains only noise. Taking the Fourier transform of this windowed ccf produces the "time domain filtered cross spectral density" (TDFCSD), in which the signal to noise ratio is independent of receiver bandwidth. Spread spectrum signals can then be both detected and characterised in an extremely sensitive broadband system by threshold detection applied to the magnitude of this IDFCSD. High resolution direction finding can then be achieved by estimating the time difference of arrival at the two antennas from the phase slope of the appropriate part of the TDFCSD. An analysis of the performance of this dual receiver system is presented. A computer simulation illustrates the signal processing involved and shows excellent agreement with the analysis. An analysis of the detection performance of this system acting in an electronic support measure (ESM) role and comparison with other systems shows that, in addition to being able to obtain more information, this system can offer significantly greater sensitivity than a crystal video receiver. Acousto-optic correlation may be used to perform the cross correlation and time domain filtering of wideband signals in real time, with final processing of the much reduced data set to obtain and analyse the TDFCSD being carried out digitally. A novel non-heterodyning space integrating architecture capable of forming the true correlation function using the zeroth diffraction orders from acousto-optic cells was invented, the operation of which is not explained by the commonly used methods of analysis. By looking again at the acousto-optic interaction, it is shown that there is considerable information in the zeroth diffraction order and a unified theory of one dimensional space integrating correlators is developed, in which many known architectures can be treated as special cases of a general all order correlator. Because of practical difficulties in using a space integrating correlator to obtain the TDFCSD for continuous inputs, later work concentrated on time integrating correlation. Theoretical analysis and practical results are presented for a time integrating acousto-optic correlator, demonstrating that it gives itself naturally to the signal processing operations required and could be used in a real surveillance system making use of the TDFCSD for detection and direction finding.DRA Funtingto

Signal Processing Design of Low Probability of Intercept Waveforms

This thesis investigates a modification to Differential Phase Shift Keyed (DPSK) modulation to create a Low Probability of Interception/Exploitation (LPI/LPE) communications signal. A pseudorandom timing offset is applied to each symbol in the communications stream to intentionally create intersymbol interference (ISI) that hinders accurate symbol estimation and bit sequence recovery by a non-cooperative receiver. Two cooperative receiver strategies are proposed to mitigate the ISI due to symbol timing offset: a modified minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) equalization algorithm and a multiplexed bank of equalizer filters determined by an adaptive Least Mean Square (LMS) algorithm. Both cooperative receivers require some knowledge of the pseudorandom symbol timing dither to successfully demodulate the communications waveform. Numerical Matlab® simulation is used to demonstrate the bit error rate performance of cooperative receivers and notional non-cooperative receivers for binary, 4-ary, and 8-ary DPSK waveforms transmitted through a line-of-sight, additive white Gaussian noise channel. Simulation results suggest that proper selection of pulse shape and probability distribution of symbol timing offsets produces a waveform that is accurately demodulated by the proposed cooperative receivers and significantly degrades non-cooperative receiver symbol estimation accuracy. In typical simulations, non-cooperative receivers required 2-8 dB more signal power than cooperative receivers to achieve a bit error rate of 1.0%. For nearly all reasonable parameter selections, non-cooperative receivers produced bit error rates in excess of 0.1%, even when signal power is unconstrained

Signal design and processing for noise radar

An efficient and secure use of the electromagnetic spectrum by different telecommunications and radar systems represents, today, a focal research point, as the coexistence of different radio-frequency sources at the same time and in the same frequency band requires the solution of a non-trivial interference problem. Normally, this is addressed with diversity in frequency, space, time, polarization, or code. In some radar applications, a secure use of the spectrum calls for the design of a set of transmitted waveforms highly resilient to interception and exploitation, i.e., with low probability of intercept/ exploitation capability. In this frame, the noise radar technology (NRT) transmits noise-like waveforms and uses correlation processing of radar echoes for their optimal reception. After a review of the NRT as developed in the last decades, the aim of this paper is to show that NRT can represent a valid solution to the aforesaid problems

Non Co-Operative Detection of LPI/LPD Signals Via Cyclic Spectral Analysis

This research proposes and evaluates a novel technique for detecting LPI/LPD communication signals using a digital receiver primarily designed to detect radar signals, such as a Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) or an Electronic Support Measures (ESM) receiver. The proposed Cyclic Spectrum Analysis (CSA) receiver is a robust detector that takes advantage of the spectral correlation properties of second-order cyclostationary signals. A computationally efficient algorithm is used to estimate the Spectral Correlation Function (SCF). Using state-of-the-art FFT processing, it is expected that the proposed CSA receiver architecture could estimate the entire cyclic spectrum m approximately 0.6 ms. The estimate is then reduced to an energy related test statistic that is valid for all cycle frequencies within the receiver bandwidth. By producing an estimate of the cyclic spectrum, the CSA receiver also benefits post-detection tasks such as signal classification and exploitation. As modeled, the ideal CSA receiver detection performance is within 1.0 dB of the radiometer in benign signal environments and consistently outperforms the radiometer in adverse signal environments. The effect on detection performance when the CSA receiver is implemented with channelized and quadrature digital receiver architectures is also examined

Advanced satellite communication technology for oceanic air traffic control

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 69).by Edward H. Kim.M.Eng

ATM-based TH-SSMA network for multimedia PCS

Personal communications services (PCS) promise to provide a variety of information exchanges among users with any type of mobility, at any time, in any place, through any available device. To achieve this ambitious goal, two of the major challenges in the system design are: i) to provide a high-speed wireless subsystem with large capacity and acceptable quality-of-service (QoS) and ii) to design a network architecture capable of supporting multimedia traffic and various kinds of user mobility. A time-hopping spread-spectrum wireless communication system called ultra-wide bandwidth (UWB) radio is used to provide communications that are low power, high data rate, fade resistant, and relatively shadow free in a dense multipath environment. Receiver-signal processing of UWB radio is described, and performance of such communications systems, in terms of multiple-access capability, is estimated under ideal multiple-access channel conditions. A UWB-signal propagation experiment is performed using the bandwidth in excess of 1 GHz in a typical modern office building in order to characterize the UWB-signal propagation channel. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the UWB radio and its robustness in a dense multipath environment. In this paper, an ATM network is used as the backbone network due to its high bandwidth, fast switching capability, flexibility, and well-developed infrastructure. To minimize the impact caused by user mobility on the system performance, a hierarchical network-control architecture is postulated. A wireless virtual circuit (WVC) concept is proposed to improve the transmission efficiency and simplify the network control in the wireless subsystem. The key advantage of this network architecture and WVC concept is that the handoff can be done locally most of the time, due to the localized behavior of PCS users.published_or_final_versio

Spread spectrum signal characteristic estimation using exponential averaging and an ad-hoc chip rate estimator

This dissertation investigates two methods of spread spectrum (SS) signal characteristic estimation for the two principle types of SS systems, frequency-hopped (FH) and direct sequence SS. The exponential averaging detector is used to detect and estimate the hopped frequencies for a SS-FH signal in the presence of interference signals as well as additive-white-Gaussian-noise (AWGN). The detection method provides an estimate of the AWGN plus interference spectrum using exponential averaging and then generates an estimate of the desired signal spectrum by combining the estimated AWGN plus interference spectrum with the composite (desired signal plus interference plus AWGN) spectrum. Finally, this dissertation evaluates the detector's performance as a function of the exponential coeeficient, the combining method, the probability of false alarm, signal-to-AWGN ratio, and signal-to-interference ratio. The second method of SS signal characteristic estimation uses a signal ad-hoc chip rate estimator (ACRE). The ACRE is used to estimate the chip rate of a half-sine pulse shaped SS direct-sequence signal. The Acre is explained in relation to its similarities and contrasts to the chip rate detector. The components and performance of the ACRE are presented for standard-ACRE. ACRE with additional filtering, and ACRE with incrementing. The additional filtering results in a reduced chip rate search range but yields improved estimation performance and incrementing has the potential for parallel processing, resulting in dramatically decreased computational time, without loss of performance.http://archive.org/details/spreadspectrumsi1094510263Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Characterization of Ultra Wideband Multiple Access Performance Using Time Hopped-Biorthogonal Pulse Position Modulation

The FCC\u27s release of its UWB First Report and Order in April 2002 spawned renewed interest in impulse signaling research. This work combines Time Hopped (TH) multiple access coding with 4-ary UWB Biorthogonal Pulse Position Modulation (TH-BPPM). Multiple access performance is evaluated in a multipath environment for both synchronous and asynchronous networks. Fast time hopping is implemented by replicating and hopping each TH-BPPM symbol NH times. Bit error expressions are derived for biorthogonal TH-BPPM signaling and results compared with previous orthogonal TH-PPM work. Without fast time hopping (NH = 1), the biorthogonal TH-BPPM technique provided gains equivalent to Gray-coded QPSK; improved BER at a given Eb/No and an effective doubling of the data rate. A synchronized network containing up to NT = 15 transmitters yields an average BER improvement (relative to an asynchronous network) of approximately -6.30 dB with orthogonal TH-PPM and approximately 5.9 dB with biorthogonal TH-BPPM. Simulation results indicate that doubling the number of multipath replications (NMP) reduces BER by approximately 3.6 dB. Network performance degrades as NT and NMP increase and synchronized network advantages apparent in the NMP = 0 case diminish with multipath interference present. With fast time hopping (NH \u3e 1) improves BER performance whenever NMP \u3c NH while reducing effective data rate by 1/NH. Compared to the NH = 1 synchronized network, TH-BPPM modulation using NH = 10 provides approximately 5.9 dB improvement at NMP = 0 and approximately 3.6 dB improvement at NMP = 5. At NMP = 10, the BER for the hopped and NH = 1 cases are not statistically different; with NH = 10 hops, BER improvement varies from approximately 0.57 to 0.14 dB (minimal variation between synchronous and asynchronous network performance)