Spread Spectrum Communication System

B. Sainath
[email protected]

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering

Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani

November 13, 2024

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Introduction

Historical Perspective:
Inventors: Hedy Lamarr, George Antheil
Patent by name secret communication system in 1942
Spread spectrum communication (SSC)
used in military communication for more than five decades

B. Sainath (BITS, PILANI) Spread Spectrum Communication November 13, 2024 2 / 17

Introduction

Historical Perspective:
Inventors: Hedy Lamarr, George Antheil
Patent by name secret communication system in 1942
Spread spectrum communication (SSC)
used in military communication for more than five decades
to overcome jamming/intentional interference effects
to hide signal from eavesdropper
Both goals can be achieved by SSC

B. Sainath (BITS, PILANI) Spread Spectrum Communication November 13, 2024 2 / 17

Spread Spectrum Basics

Figure: Spread spectrum concept. Source: https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/

english/corporate/technology/rd/tech/network/multiple_access/
05/index.html

Principle: spreading the signal’s spectrum such that it behave much-like

background noise (illustration in next slide)
SS techniques: Direct sequence SS (DSSS), Frequency hopping SS
(FHSS), Time hopping SS
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Spread Spectrum Basics

Figure: Spreading the signal’s spectrum such that it behave much-like back-
ground noise. Source: https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/corporate/
technology/rd/tech/network/multiple_access/05/index.html

B. Sainath (BITS, PILANI) Spread Spectrum Communication November 13, 2024 4 / 17

Spread Spectrum
Communication System

Key application: Suppression of (intentional/unintentional) interference

Transmitter (Tx):
Binary information (i.e., random sequence of zeros & ones) is PSK
modulated ⇒ PSK wave
Spectrum of PSK wave is spreaded by maximal length sequence (MLS)
called spreading code sequence or pseudorandom noise (PN) sequence
Let W2 (or Rc ) denote chip rate of PN sequence, W1 (or Rb ) denote
information bit rate, W1 << W2
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Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum
(DSSS) Communication System

Tx o/p: signal has noise-like spectrum

Receiver:
Transmitted signal plus interference (jamming) is applied to the product
modulator
Despreading of spectrum is performed by replica of the PN sequence used
at the Tx
Resulting signal is applied to coherent PSK detector to recover original
binary information
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BPSK-modulated DSSS System Model

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Processing Gain (PG)

Ratio of chip rate (Rc ) to bit rate (Rb )

Rc Tb
PG = = ,
Rb Tc

where Tb is information bit duration, Tc is chip duration

PG accounts the gain in SNR obtained by the use of spread spectrum
Example:
Tb = 4.095 ms, Tc = 1 µs. Determine PG.

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Processing Gain (PG)

Ratio of chip rate (Rc ) to bit rate (Rb )

Rc Tb
PG = = ,
Rb Tc

where Tb is information bit duration, Tc is chip duration

PG accounts the gain in SNR obtained by the use of spread spectrum
Example:
Tb = 4.095 ms, Tc = 1 µs. Determine PG. Ans. PG = 4095
Length of feedback shift register

B. Sainath (BITS, PILANI) Spread Spectrum Communication November 13, 2024 8 / 17

Processing Gain (PG)

Ratio of chip rate (Rc ) to bit rate (Rb )

Rc Tb
PG = = ,
Rb Tc

where Tb is information bit duration, Tc is chip duration

PG accounts the gain in SNR obtained by the use of spread spectrum
Example:
Tb = 4.095 ms, Tc = 1 µs. Determine PG. Ans. PG = 4095
Length of feedback shift register m = 12 since 2m − 1 = 4095
q 
2Eb
For BPSK, average bit error probability pe = Q N0
Eb
Bit energy-to-noise density ratio N0 = PG × PJ , where average signal
power P = ETbb , J denotes average interference power, J
P is called
Jamming margin

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SNRs & PG

Let SNRI denote input SNR at the receiver

In dB, 10 log10 SNRI
Let SNRO denote output SNR at the receiver
In dB, 10 log10 SNRO
Output SNR in terms of Input SNR and PG:

10 log10 SNRO = 10 log10 SNRI + 10 log10 PG

Note: Add 3 dB term to account for gain in SNR due to use of coherent
detection (with exact phase knowledge)
Simple numerical example (in class)

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Frequency Hopping (FH) SS:
Concept & Variants

If PG attained is not sufficient, alternate SS methods needed

FHSS
Carrier hops randomly from one hop to another
Uses M-ary FSK
Slow FHSS: Symbol rate Rs of MFSK is an integer multiple of hop rate Rh
Several symbols are transmitted on each frequency hop
Fast FHSS: Hop rate Rh of MFSK is an integer multiple of symbol rate Rs
Carrier frequency will change (or hop) several times during the transmission
of one symbol

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DSSS versus FHSS

Unlike DSSS, spectrum of the transmitted signal is spread sequentially

”Sequentially” ⇒ pseudorandom-ordered sequence of frequency hops
Jammer needs to cover a wider spectrum by randomly hopping
data-modulated carrier from one frequency to other

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Functional Blocks of FHSS
Communication System

Transmitter: MFSK modulator, Mixer, Frequency Synthesizer, PN

sequence generator
Receiver: Mixer, Frequency Synthesizer, PN sequence generator, MFSK
demodulator
Limitations: Involve use of expensive frequency synthesizers
Used in much earlier versions of Bluetooth 1

1a short-range wireless technology standard

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Frequency synthesizer: Example

Figure: An illustration of a frequency synthesizer, which enables the generation of many

frequencies.

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Numerical Example

Spectrum generator 1 produces a signal rich in the following harmonics:

1 MHz, 2 MHz,. . .,9 MHz.
Spectrum generator 2 produces a second signal rich in the following
harmonics: 100 KHz, 200 KHz,. . .,900 kHz
Determine: the range of possible frequency outputs of this synthesizer
and its resolution
(Verify) Ans.
The lowest frequencies: f1 = 1 MHz, f2 = 100 KHz (0.1 MHz) ⇒
f1 − f2 = 0.9 MHz, f1 + f2 = 1.1 MHz.
The highest frequencies: f1 = 9 MHz, f2 = 900 KHz (0.9 MHz) ⇒
f1 − f2 = 8.1 MHz, f1 + f2 = 9.9 MHz.
The resolution of the system is the bandwidth of the output signal

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Applications of SS Techniques

Protection against jammers (most imp. application)

∵ high tolerance to intentional interference
Position location (E.g., Global positioning system)
accuracy ∝ spreading bandwidth
Multipath interference suppression in radio communications
Multiple access communications
Code division multiple access (CDMA)

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Multiple Access Techniques

Figure: Resource distribution in multiple access techniques: FDMA, TDMA and CDMA.

Each CDMA user has full access to the entire radio resources
the spreading codes assigned to all the K users form an orthogonal set

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References

CDMA: principles of spread spectrum by A. J. Viterbi

Communication systems by Simon Haykin

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