Design of a High Data Rate Audio Band OFDM Modem

Land mobile radio technology (LMR) has existed since the early 1920\u27s. The most visible manifestation of this technology is the handheld VHF/UHF radios also referred to as \u27walkie-talkie\u27. These handheld devices are one of the most ubiquitous forms of radio communication systems. Most of them are designed for transmitting analog voice signals. Due to an increase in the amount of digitized analog signals over the past few years complemented by a need for transmitting pure digital data, there has been a desire to transmit digital data. There are methods which allow the analog radios to transmit digital data without any modifications; however the data rate achievable using these methods is very low. In contrast, the digital variants of these hand-held radios are capable of transmitting digital data at comparatively higher data rates. However they are expensive and require major infrastructure overhauls. In this thesis, a prototype modem was developed which interfaces with an analog radio without any modifications to the radio. Furthermore, the data rates achievable are comparable with those achieved using digital radios. The modem uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technique to generate an audio band signal which is fed to the radio. The OFDM technique used to generate the audio band signal from data bits ensures maximum bandwidth efficiency. The developed modem is capable of communicating over Ethernet connection. It uses a RJ 45 interface to connect to a data source

Distributed Digital Radios for Land Mobile Radio Applications

The main objective of this dissertation is to develop the second generation of Distributed Digital Radio (DDR) technology. A DDR II modem provides an integrated voice/data service platform, higher data rates and better throughput performance as compared to a DDR I modem. In order to improve the physical layer performance of DDR modems an analytical framework is first developed to model the Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing over Frequency Modulation (OFDM/FM) systems. The use of OFDM provides a spectrally efficient method of transmitting data over LMR channels. However, the high Peak-to-Average (PAR) of OFDM signals results in either a low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) at FM receiver or a high non-linear distortion of baseband signal in the FM transmitter. This dissertation presents an analytical framework to highlight the impact of high PAR of OFDM signal on OFDM/FM systems. A novel technique for reduction of PAR of OFDM called Linear Scaling Technique (LST) is developed. The use of LST mitigates the signal distortion occurring in OFDM over FM systems. Another important factor which affects the throughput of LMR networks is the Push-to-Talk (PTT) delay. A PTT delay refers to the delay between the instant when a PTT switch on a conventional LMR radio is keyed/unkeyed and a response is observed at the radio output. It can be separated into a Receive-To-Transmit Switch Interval (RTSI) or a Transmit-To-Receive Switch Interval (TRSI). This dissertation presents the typical RTSI delay values, distributions and their impact on throughput performance of LMR networks. An analytical model is developed to highlight the asymmetric throughput problem and the unintentional denial of service (UDOS) occurring in heterogeneous LMR networks consisting of radios with different PTT delay profiles. This information will be useful in performance and capacity planning of LMR networks in future