Spread-spectrum
communication techniques
by T.S.D. Tsui and T.G. Clarkson
Spread-spectrum modulation can be used
in a radio system t o reduce the
likelihood of intercept, as well as
providing some protection against
jamming and interference. These anti-
jam, anti-interference and low-
probability-of-intercept properties are
highly desirable in secured
communication systems. In addition,
spread-spectrum techniques have been
proposed t o combat spectral congestion
by improving the efficiency of spectrum
utilisation. Spread-spectrumtechniques
are also widely used in ranging systems
and in local-area networks (LANs) or
other multiple-accesssystems. In this
article, the three main spread-spectrum
techniques are outlined and then
applications of frequency-hopping
systems and some of the techniques used
are described.
1 Introduction
In a spread-spectrum radio system, the information to be
transmitted is spread over a wide bandwidth such that it
cannot be decoded by a conventional radio receiver. Only
those spread-spectrum receivers using the same code
sequence as the transmitter can despread the wide-
bandwidth signal back into the baseband, where the
desired information can be retrieved. Although a spread-
spectrum transmission is more difficult to detect and to
receive, privacy is not guaranteed by this modulation
process unless the codes used for spreading are
crytographically secure. Even more security can be
provided if further encryption coding is applied to the
message.
Spread-spectrum communications may be defined’ ‘-‘as
systems that possess these two characteristics:
the transmitted signal is spread over a frequency band
much wider than the minimum bandwidth required
for the information to be sent, and
0 the spreading of the signal is achieved by encoding it
with a pseudo-random code sequence, otherwise
known as pseudo noise (PN), which is independent of
the information itself.
ELECTRONICS Pr COMMUNICATIOY EUGINEERING JOUKNM FERRITARY 1994
In spread-spectrum systems, the notions of ‘processing
gain’ and ‘jamming margin’ are of importance as these are
performance measures of the system. Processing gain can
be described in any spread-spectrum system as the
improvement gained by the system process, i.e. by
bandwidth spreading, over conventional modulation
techniques. Therefore at the receiver, the processing gain
can be expressed as the ratio between the signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) at the receiver output. where the signal has
been despread, to the SNR at the receiver input where
spread-spectrum signal appears. Thus.
SNR at receiver output
processing gain = (1)
~
SNR at receiver input
In practical systems, a more convenient measure of
processing gain is the ratio of the spread RF bandwidth to
the information rate of the system,’ i.e.
However, this does not imply that the system can operate
in the presence of interfering or jamming signals whose
energy levels are in the order of the intended transmission
energy multiplied by the processing gain.
The figure of merit, or jamming margin, J is used to
describe the capability of a spread-spectrum system to
operate in such an unfriendly environment:
jamming margin = J =C,-SNR,,,,,, (3
where SNR,,, is the minimum signal-to-noise ratio
acceptable at the receiver input.
For example, consider a system with a processing gain
of 10 dB and a receiver demodulator requiring a minimum
input SNRof 10 dB so that an acceptable data error rate can
be obtained. The maximum interference that can be
tolerated is therefore 10 dB over the message signal. Any
noise or interference levels higher than 10 dB will disrupt
the communication link.
2 Time hopping
In the time-hopping (TH) spread-spectrum technique.
signals are transmitted in short pulses whose intervals are
determined by a pseudo-random code sequence. This
technique seeks to accomplish uncertainty in the
communication channel for any unintended receivcrs by
varying the time intervals between transmissions.
3

s(r)= spreading pulses
I t
1 -
0 I , n I I
I
Fig. 1 Time-hopping signals in the time domain
Fig. 1shows a signal with a bit rate of 1/T. In each period replica and therefore spread to a bandwidth equal to that
of T seconds, there are T / r subdivisions. During each bit
duration, a subdivision (a ‘chip’) is selected at random by
the spreading code, which is independent of the
information, so that the intervals between successive
pulses are vaned accordingly.The product signalx(t) is the
desired spread-spectrum representation which is
modulated for RF transmission. The transmission
bandwidth is thus T / r times larger than the baseband
signal bandwidth since the PN code has a pulse rate of 1 / ~ . of using DS/SS over conventional modulation
TH in its simplest form employs a carrier with a constant
frequency. The transmission link is therefore easily
disrupted if a jamming signal is transmitted at that
particular carrier frequency. In this respect, TH used as a
stand-alone system does not really offer the anti-jamming phase-shift keyed) direct sequence signal modulated by a
property usually associated with spread-spectrum
techniques. This is because of the dilficulties in
transmitting a signal with an extremely low duty cycle
when the average power must be comparable with that of a
jammer; the peak transmitted power must be P / s where P
is the average power of the transmitter. If very narrow
pulses are to be transmitted, then not only is the peak
power very high, but adjacent channel interference will be
high and ringing of tuned circuits will cause severe
intersymbol interference.
3 Direct-sequence spread-spectrum
Direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DS/SS) is achieved by
4 ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING JOURNAL FEBRUARY 1994
- -
modulating the message signal by a
pseudo-random spreading code
whose ‘chip’ rate is much higher
than the bit rate of the intended
message.
The duration of a chip is therefore
equal to the period of the clock
which generates the pseudo-
random spreading code (Fig. 2).
The pattern of the chips is
determined by an information-
independent pseudo-random
spreading code. The chip rate is a
function of the length of this pseudo-
I I
random sequence. For a code ol 16
chips per bit, the chip duration
becomes T/l6 seconds and the
bandwidth for transmission is thus
16 times larger than the original
data bit rate.
At the receiver, signal
despreading is attained by
multiplication with. an identical
pseudo-random code, reversing the
process of encoding at the
transmitter, thereby reproducing
the baseband information.
Undesired signals which are not
synchronous with the reference
code at the receiver will also be
multiplied with the local code
of the unwanted signal plus the bandwidth of the I”code.
An IF bandpass filter with a passband equal to the
message bandwidth will reject asynchronous signals in
the band. Some techniques for achieving correlation of the
receiver with the transmitted signal are discussed in
Reference 6.
The signal-to-noise ratio improvement gained by
spreading the message for transmission is the advantage
techniques.
Processinggain in DS/SS
The power spectral density function of a RPSK (binary
carrier of frequencyf, has an envelope the form [ (sinr)/x12
with nulls at integer multiples off,wheref, is the frequency
of the pseudo-random code. In general, the main lobe, i.e.
null-to-null bandwidth, is considered the RF bandwidth,
SW,,,of the DS system and is equal to twice the pseudo-
random code rate, i.e. SW, = 2 Xf,. An IF bandpass filter
with a passband bandwidth of 2 xf is used to reject the
unwanted signals.
Using Eqn. 2, the processing gain is therefore
Go= BWXI.=2xR,-
‘b
where R, is the PN code rate and Rhis the data bit rate.
_ _ ~ I-
 A multi-user link can be established using LWSS, determined by an independent pseudo-random code. At
provided that the users sharing the same bandwidth use any instant, a carrier frequency is selected from a range of
pseudo-random codes that have low crosscorrelation predetermined frequencies known only to the system
properties to minimise inter-user interference. Unknown users. The communication link is therefore difficult to
users will appear as noise in the link and only if the exact disrupt if a jammer does not have any knowledge of the
replica of the PN code is available will their receivers be frequencies used or their hopping pattern. The usual
able to demodulate the incoming signal. The process by method of baseband modulation is binary or M-ary
which DS/SS transmissions can co-exist in the same frequency shift keying (BSFK or MFSK).
bandwidth is called code division multiple access In an FH system, the range of frequencies used can be
(CDMA). large and is dependent on the pseudo-random code used.
For a 13-stage m-sequence code, the number of possible
4 Frequency-hopping spread spectrum discrete frequencies is 2'" -1 = 8191. The total bandwidth
required is the product of the number of frequency
In the frequency-hopping spread-spectrum (FH/SS) channels and the frequency deviation of the modulating
technique, the message signal is modulated onto a carrier process. For a 8191 frequency channel FH system
with a hopping frequency. The hopping pattern is employing BFSK, with a frequency deviation of 25 kHz, the

0 f

-v -
,

PN sequence = p(f)
t
1- - - - I
-- - .........
I
-1
,
I

-1 - - - I

' 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1

Fig. 2 information bit divided into chips in DS/SS

ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ESGI N ICE KIN G .IOUKNAI. I:EBRYART 199-I >

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
I frequency
Fig. 3 Spectrum of an FH transmitter. The hop rate is
4 kHz and six channels are shown at 4 kHz spacing. The
centre frequency is 10 MHz and the horizontal scale
8 kHz per division. The vertical scale is 10 dB per division
I l l l l l l l l l
frequency
Fig. 4 Spectrum of an FH transmitter. The hop rate is
4 kHz and a six channel group at 8 kHz spacing is shown
with the third channel suppressed. The centre frequency
is 10 MHz and the horizontal scale 8 kHz per division.
The vertical scale is 10 dB per division
minimum bandwidth required would be over 200 MHz for
non-overlapping frequency channels. Fig. 3 shows the
spectrum of a frequency-hopping transmitter using six
channels at 4 kHz channel spacing and a hop rate of 4 kHz.
The horizontal scale is 8 kHz per division and each vertical
division represents 10 dB. There is some frequency
modulation on the transmitted signal as can be seen from
the spectral lines spaced at approximately 0.8 kHz. Such a
system, where the hop rate and channel spacing are
similar, may be expected to suffer from greater adjacent
channel interference than would an FH transmitter using
wider channel spacing. Fig. 4 shows the spectrum of a
transmitter using the same hop rate but with 8 kHz channel
spacing.
At the receiver, an identical PN sequence to the one at
the transmitter is used by the local frequency synthesiser
to reproduce the carrier frequencies for down-conversion.
Additional offsets are used to translate the synchronous
6 EIECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING JOURNAL FEBRUARY 1994
,
signals to an IF band so that asynchronous signals can be
rejected using an IF filter. These frequencies are matched
to the hopping pattern so as to down-convertthe incoming
message to the appropriate IF band. As with DS/SS, any
unwanted signal not correlated with the frequency-
hopping pattern will be despread to a much wider
bandwidth. The use of an IF bandpass filter rejects these
undesired signals before baseband demodukation takes
place.
Processinggain in FH/SS
For conventionalmodulationtechniques using one fxed
1 frequency channel, an interferer need only transmit at that
particular frequency to disrupt the communication link
completely. In FH/SS, if there are N frequency channels,
the jamming of a single channel will only cause a
degradation of data error rate by a factor 1/N. Thus from
eqn. 2, the processing gain in a FH/SS system is equal to N,
i.e.
transmission bandwidth - N x baseband bandwidth --
baseband bandwidth baseband bandwidth
Jammingsignals in FH
Consider an FH system with N = 100 frequency
channels. For an interferer to jam the transmission link
completely, its bandwidth will have to cover a significant
proportion of the frequency channels in use. By doing so,
the interferer’s effective power at any single frequency will
be decreased proportionately. In other words, a 20 dR
increase in power is required by the interferer if it is to
maintain the same level of interference at each of the 100
frequency channels. On the other hand, a narrowband
J
jammer in one channel can cause a relatively high error
rate of lo-’ for simple BFSK systems. The chip error rate
(CER) can be described as:
(4)
where C,is the number of jammed channels, i.e. where the
interferer’s power level is higher than the message signal
power.
The power spectral density function of a narrowband
jammer is shown in Fig. 5. The simplest way to combat this
kind of continuous wave (CW) jamming is by using a
narrowband filter tuned to the jamming signal band,
thereby providing a reasonable amount of noise rejection.
Another countermeasure is to remove the jammed
frequency channels from the frequency set.
In the light of the above interference scenarios, some
other processes for transmission must be used to imprcve
the data error rate. One solution is to increase N, the
number of discrete frequencies used, so that the
degradation due to a narrowband interferer will be reduced
but a wider bandwidth for the communication link will be
required if the channel spacing or frequency deviation
remains the same. In practice, noncontiguous, overlapping
frequency spacing can be used to increase the number of
channels within a limited bandwidth.
__ ~
r---
 Another way to improve the error rate is to increase the
number of hops per bit. For example, a bit of information
can be conveyed over three hop frequencies so that a
decision on the bit is only taken on the majority being
correct, i.e. 2 out of 3 bits are correct. Using this method,
the chip rate will have to be increased if the same
information rate is to be maintained. The limitation here is
the switching speed of the frequency synthesiser.
Another jamming scenario is that of an intelligent
jammer following an FH transmission by first detecting
which frequency is being used and then transmitting
interference at that frequency. The follower frequency
detector needs to cover a relatively wide band so as not to
miss out on the spread signal. Having found which
frequency is in use, the interferer amplifies the received
signal, mixes it with noise and retransmits it to the
intended receiver. This is an effective jamming strategy in
slow FH/SS systems. To combat this kind of jamming, a
fast FH/SS system can be employed so that the frequency
carrier will have hopped to another channel before the
jammer follower manages to detect and retransmit the
signal.
For example, consider a FH system operating at 10 000
hops per second the distance covered by the transmission
in each hop period is therefore approximately 30 km. If the
follower jammer is situated 30 km farther than the
intended receiver from the transmitter then, even if the
jammer is able to detect and respond to the transmission
instantly, the carrier used will have hopped to another
frequency before the interference arrives. From this
viewpoint, the faster the FH/SS system can operate, the
more difficult it is for the transmission to be disrupted.
5 Hybrid systems
Hybrid systems are used to overcome the shortcomings of
a single SS technique in certain applications.
In frequency hopping and direct-sequence hybrid
systems, the direct-sequence signals are modulated onto a
I 1 I I I 1
frequency
I I I l l
Fig. 6 Power spectrum of a hybrid FH/DS system. The
hop rate is 4 kHz with channels spaced 100 kHz apart
and the DS chip rate is 200 kbivs. The centre frequency
is 10 M H z and the horizontal scale 100 kHz per division.
The vertical scale is 10 dB per division
ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEEKING JOL'KUAL FEKRI'ARY 1994
Fig. 5 Narrowband jamming in an FH system
hopping frequency carrier. As bandwidth spreading in a
DS system is limited by the rate of the PN code, further
spectrum spreading can be accomplished by use of FH so
that when the DS signals are modulated onto the hopping
carrier, the signal energy would appear across a very wide
band. The spectrum of a DS transmission appears to be a
wideband pseudo-noise signal. The frequency spectrum of
a hybrid FH/DS system is shown in Figs. 6 and 7, where
the horizontal divisions represent 100 kHz per division. In
Fig. 6, a hop rate of 4 kHz is chosen over three channels
with a channel spacing of 100 kHz; the DS chip rate is 200
kbit/s. For comparison, Fig. 7 shows the same transmitter,
but with 200 kHz channel spacing for the FH carrier.
One application of a hybrid system is to vastly increase
the spread bandwidth. Suppose a SS system intends to
spread the bandwidth to 500 MHz. Employing a single SS
technique, it would re,quire either a 250 Mbit/s DS system
or a FH system with 50 000 frequency channels at 10 kHz
spacing, for example. By incorporating both DS and FH
spread-spectrum techniques, the same bandwidth
spreading can be achieved by using a 50 Mbit/s code
sequence and ten frequency channels at 50 MHz spacing.
It is clear from these figures that the hybrid designs do not
place the same demands on circuit speed as does a single
SS system of similar performance.
Time and frequency hopping hybrids tend to be used
1 i' i i i i i i i i 1
frequency
I
Fig 7 Power spectrum of a hybrid FH/DS system. The
hop rate is 4 kHz with channels spaced 200 kHz apart
and the DS chip rate is 200 kbiVs. The centre frequency
is 10 MHz and the horizontal scale 100 kHz per division.
The vertical scale is 10 dB per division
I
Fig. 8 Maximal length
sequence generators
I
most widely in situations where a large number of users
with widely variable distances or transmitter power are to
operate simultaneously using a single link. Simple coding
is usually used in these circumstances for its addressing
capability rather than for spectrum spreading. Although
plain TH is easily disrupted, when used in conjunctionwith
other spread-spectrum modulation techniques in a hybrid
system the effectiveness of the overall system is
significantlyincreased.
When using direct-sequence modulation in a code
division multiple access (CDMA) environment as
described in Section 3, there may not be sufficient access
for each user due to the crosscorrelation properties of the
codes used. Time hopping may then be used to create extra
channel slots by time division multiplexing.
6 Pseudo-noise spreading code and
synchronisation
APN sequence is used to encode data in a spread-spectrum
system. An offset in the PN code between a transmitter and
a receiver will dislocate the system completely until
synchronisation is acquired. The receiver will not be able
to despread the incoming signals into the correct
bandwidth, therefore they will be rejected by the IF filters
as noise. Therefore all spread-spectrum systems require
an initial synchronisation period to align the code
sequences. The pseudo-random code sequence used
should therefore have low autocorrelation to minimise
2"- 1
peak value = 2"- 1 Y L the all-zeros output.
I j I ' A
1 bit 0 + 1 bit sequence offset
Fig. 9 Autocorrelation function of an ideal rn-sequence
8 ELECTRONICS & COMMIJNICATION ENGINEERING JOURNAL FEBRUARY 1994
~
false synchronisation and, if required, a long repeat period
to make it difficult for non-authorised users to acquire
synchronisation.
The term pseudo-random is used to describe codes that
appear to be random but can be reproduced by
deterministic means. Pseudo-random sequences can be
broadly divided into two main categories: secure and
nonsecure.
Maximal length sequences, more often called m-
sequences, are nonsecure codes and these have been
shown to be decipherable when a number of contiguous
bits (at least twice the number of stages in the shift
register) in a sequence are known. Although m-sequences
are nonsecure, they are often utilised for their linearity and
bandwidth spreading properties in spread-spectrum
communication and ranging systems. Transmission
security can be provided only if the message is also
encoded with a cryptographicallystrong code.
Fig. 8 shows a simple configuration of a binary m-
sequence generator implemented using shift registers
and modulo '2' adders. The outputs from selected delay
elements are added before being fed back to the first
stage. A '0'or a '1' at the multiplier determines which
outputs are added. Since the generator relies on modulo
'2'additions, the sequence will stay at zero if all the outputs
are zeros, so this is a condition that should not be allowed
to happen. An 'OR gate at the first stage input can be used
to inject a one to the sequence if required. The outputs
taken from each delay element therefore form an n-tuple
number which can be used, for cxample, in
channel selection of a frequency
synthesiser. For an n-stage sequence
generator, the number of n-tuple
combinations is therefore 2"-1, excluding
In Fig. 8, the output of the sequence
generator forms a series of '0's and '1's. For
an m-sequence, the longest code produced
at this output is 2"-1 bits, thus referred to as
a maximal length sequence.This code is also
periodicwith aperiod of (2"-1)xT, where Tis
the clock period of the shift register.
The autocorrelation function describes the
similaritybetween the sequence being tested
-
I
and its phase-shifted version. It can be expressed as the
number of bits that agree minus the number of bits that
disagree between the two sequences being compared. Fig.
9 shows the autocorrelation function for an n-stage ni-
sequence. The triangular form represents linrarity in the
function up to +1 bit shifts. The peak magnitude at zero
shift is 2”-1 because all 2“-1 bits of the two m-sequences
agree. Because of the periodicity of the m-sequence, the
autocorrelation will peak again at 2”-1 shifts when the
sequence repeats itself.
Since the autocorrelation function of an m-sequence
reaches a maximum at zero shift, not only can a spread-
spectrum receiver easily detect whether the incoming
signal is genuine, but also the chances of talse
synchronisation are minimal.
7 Synchronisation of FH systems
It is generally undesirable for there to be any special
preamble in the modulation or the hopping pattern
otherwise system security may be compromised. ‘Therefore
acquisition techniques for the synchronisation of a
frequency-hopping transmitter and receiver have been
derived.
One technique anticipates the transmitted hopping
pattern at the receiver, which waits for a frequency in the
set which is expected in the near future. In this way the
receiver is preset to a future point in the pseudo-random
frequency sequence. When a signal is detected on this
channel. the receiver starts to hop, continuing the
sequence from the preset point. If this received signal
coincides with the transmitter being at the same point in
1
I
Fig. 10 A fast frequency-hopping radio control system. Three functional control systems are shown (- - -): DSP,
Controller and Sequence Generator, the latter two using RlSC (reduced instruction set computer) processor boards
(ARM = Acorn RlSC machine)
the scqucncc, then the receivcr continues to detect a signal
each hop period.
This technique has some drawbacks, however. The
signal detected on the waiting frequency might be derived
from a jammer. be random noise, or it might mean that the
transmitter has used this frequency -hut at some other
point in the pseudo-random sequence. In these cases, the
receiver starts to hop. bur there is no correlation with the
transmitter. This is soon detected as the receiver will find
that it is receiving no signal during many of the hop periods.
In this case, the receiver will select another waiting
frequency and attempt to obtain synchronisation again. A
more severe drawback is that the synchronisation of the
transmitter’s and receiver’s codes might be missed if a fade
occurred at the critical moment on the waiting frequency.
To improve the acquisition performance of the system in
the presence offading. another approach is used where the
receiver anticipates the transmitted sequence but, instead
of waiting for a single frequency, the receiver hops slowly
through the sequence until a signal is detected (a ‘hit’),at
which point the receiver hops at the rcgular hopping rate.
If a number of ‘hits’ are detected in succession then the
probability that the receiver is synchronised with the
transmitter is high.’ If the correlation between incoming
signals does not hold, then it is likely that the signals
received were spurious and the receiver reverts to slow
hopping in order to acquire synchronisation.
FH system iwzplemepitatioii
The latter acquisition technique above has been
irnplemenled in a 16 khop/s system (Fig. 10). This is
illustrative of many of the problems which need to be
data out
mq..;
I1 ARM
of day
data gale
overcome in building such a fast frequency-hopping
system. One major difficulty in a fast hopping system is the
potential intersymbol interference created in the receiver
by narrowband filters. A narrow-bandwidthfilter will tend
to ring when the receiver's local oscillator changes
frequency. Signal shaping takes place at both the
transmitter and receiver to minimise this effect.The filters
used in the IF stages have to possess a carefully selected
bandwidth in order to trade adjacent channel performance
against intersymbol interference. In the 16 khop/s system,
the filter bandwidth selected was approximately three
times the channel spacing of 25 kHz. In spite ol using such
a bandwidth, the delay imposed on the signal passing
through this IF filter represents about one half a hop period
and this reduces the time available for processing the
received pulse.
To filter and detect the IF signal, digital signal
processing (DSP) techniques were used.".y Since the
signal received is of finite duration (one hop period) it is
treated as a causal system. Multiple samples of the signal
are taken during one hop period of the receiver. These are
processed to determine whether a signal has been
received and, if so, whether that signal is early or late with
respect to the receiver's timing. In this way, not only can
the output of the filter be used to control the acqu
synchronisation, but it can also be used to generate an
early/late signal for fine synchronisation and to maintain
synchronisation once the receiver is correlated with the
transmitter
In the system shown in Fig. 10,dual-processorfilters (for
I and Q signals) based on the AT&T DSPl6A devices
sample the IF signal at a rate of 125kHz. A2-bit result from
the DSP section describes the signal received as hit, early,
late or miss.
to the controller which
algorithm. This controller
determines the state of the receiver, which is either in-lock
or unsynchroniscd. If thc rcceivcr is in-lock, then only
small timing adjustments at the receiver are allowed to
keep the received signal centred in the receiver's timing
window. These adjustments are necessary because of
clock drift and relative movcment of cithcr the receiver or
the transmitter. If the receiver is unsynchronised, then the
controller scts the hop rate to be 20%slower than normal
whilst no signals are received. Should a signal be received
which exceeds a thrcshold,then the controller sets the hop
rate to the nominal value. The control of the rcceivcr's
hopping rate is governed by a ladder alg~rithrn.~ If a signal
is received, the receiver's state is moved one place up the
ladder, otherwise the state moves one place down the
ladder. Thus, when a signal is received in successive hop
periods, the lop of the ladder is quickly reached and the
receiver is said to be in-lock. It can be seen that a small
number of signal misses can be tolerated whilst the ladder
is being climbed and this improves the performance of the
acquisition algorithm in the presence of fading, noise or
jamming. Should the receiver encounter a number of hop
periods in which no signal has been received, thc
receiver's state descends the ladder. The ladder is of
auficierit length to allow for long fades. Should the bottom
10 ELECUIRONICS& COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING JOURNAL FEBRUARY 1994
~
of the ladder be reached, the receiver is deemed to be out
of lock and therefore is unsynchronised with the
transmitter. In this case the acquisition cycle is rcstarted.
A separate system generates the hopping sequence and
this also implements the timing adjustments in the
receiver. The sequence generator generates a pseud@
random sequence which, in this case, will not repeat for
many days, It is possible to instruct the sequencegenerator
to pass channel numbers to the frequency synthesiser
startingfrom any chosen time. In this way the receiver may
be made to anticipate the transmitter, by being set to a
point in the sequence which is ahead of that in the
transmitter. Small timing adjustments are enabled by a
special timing circuit which allows the modulus of a
counter to be changed during its operation. This timer
Eenerates a strobe to control the time at which the
synthesiser changes frequency and the timer also clocks a
hardware first-in first-out store (FIFO) which is filled with
the sequence numbers output from the sequence
generator.The use of a hardware FIFO is cssential in order
to achieve accurate control of the synthesiser; interrupt
latencies in a software solution would not allow the system
to funclion correctly.
It is highly desirable that the signal received during one
hop period be used to determine the length of the next hop
period. In this way the maximum acquisition performance
is obtained, otherwise timing adjustments will have a
latency of one hop period or more. It is difficult to update
the receiver's timing each hop but Fig. 11 shows the
relationship between the input and output signals of the
processors which enables this to be performed.
The IF filter imposes a delay of approximately half of a
hop period. Thus the processing time available to
determine the length of the next hop is reduced as shown
in Fig. 11. Not all the IF samples have been received by the
DSP processor when the next hop period starts.Therefore
the signal from the next hop period is already being
received by the RF stages at the point when its duration is
being decided. The shaded area in Fig. 11shows that the
hop length may be decreased by 1%or increased by 1%or
20%from its nominal value for early/late and acquisition
modes, respectively. All timing adjustments must be
completed before the shaded area is entered.The software
in each subsystem and the hardware interfaces between
subsystems have been organised so that the time between
converting the last DSP sample and changing the modulus
of the hoplength counter is minimised. In this system,that
interval has been reduced to around 20 ps.
8 Other spread-spectrum applications
GPS
One application of DS/SS is in ranging systems, for
example the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System
(GPS).'' In the GPS system,anumber olsatellitesare used
to achieveglobal coverage. Each satellite transmits a signal
which gives the time of transmission (GPS time) and the
satellite's position. The receiver is passive and receives a
signal from four satellites,from which three co-ordinatesof
position and one of time difference are computed. The
~
I -
 RF
stage
output of
IF filler
-' filter delay -' sampled IF signal
Fig. 11 The critical timing relationships between the control signals in the fast frequency-hopping radio. The three
functional systems shown in Fig. 10 are responsible for the signals shown. CONT = Controller; SEQ = Sequence
Generator
satellites transmit on two frequencies: 1575.420 MHz (L,)
and 1227.600 MHz (LJ. L, carries a civil 'clear acquisition'
(C/A) spread-spectrum code and also a military 'precise'
(P) code modulated onto quadrature carriers; & carries
only the P code. The C/A code is a 1023 bit Gold code
clocked at 1.023 Mbit/s and repeats every 1ms. The P code
is clocked at 10.23 Mbit/s and is formed from the product
of two relatively-prime Gold codes each of which has a
sequence length of over 15 million, so that the resulting
code does not repeat for 38 weeks. However, the P code is
restarted at midnight GMT each Saturday-Sunday.
The correlation of the transmitted pseudo-random code
with an identical copy at the receiver allows an extremely
accurate measure of range to be obtained in terms of the
relative time offset required to achieve correlation. With its
higher chip rate, the P code is capable of ten-fold greater
accuracy than the C/Acode. The repeat time of 1ms for the
C/A code means that an unambiguous range can be
measured to the nearest 300 km, but since the code needs
to be aligned to within one chip period, the accuracy is
better than 300 m. Because the autocorrelation function
decreases linearly to t1 bit, a receiver can measure
distances to better than t l / ~ bit accuracy. Using
postprocessing techniques, accuracies of better than
10 m are routinely claimed" using a C/Acode.
Frequency hopping
Frequency-hopping systems are mainly used for military
applications owing to the complexity involved in
synthesiser design when a fast hopping rate is used. A hop
rate of up to 2000 hops/s can be used in the Jaguarl'system
but higher hop rates can be achieved in practical systems,
as shown above. Such radios usually operate in the VHF or
UHF bands, although HF versions are sometimes used. A
development of Jaguar is Racal's Panther Radio System. In
its VHF version, Panther hops at 100 Hz within a narrow
subband of nine outer bands, each of which is 6.4 kHz in
width. Each outer band contains 256 channels.
Alternatively, the outer bands may be 58 MHz in width,
each containing 2320 channels. For HF use, a hop rate of
ELECTRONICS & COMMIJNICATION EKGINEERIKG JOLlRN.41. FEKKL'AKY 1994
(CONT)
10 Hz is used with up to 100 channels, which may be pre-
programmed in 100 Hz steps. Upper sideband, lower
sideband and CW modulation modes are supported.
Frequency hopping has also been proposed as a means
of making more efficient use of the frequency spectra'"-''
by re-using existing fixed-channel allocations. For
example, if a fast frequency-hopping (FFH) transmitter
operates at 16000 hops per second and uses 1000
frequency channels, then a receiver tuned to one of these
futed frequencies will receive interference on average 16
times a second, but the interference lasts only 1/16 000th
second each time. Only a sparse network of FFH
transmitters is likely to be possible in such circumstances
so that the service provided by the primary, fixed service is
not disrupted. Using time division multiplexing in addition
to FFH, allows the dwell time on each channel to be
reduced; alternatively, the hop rate may be reduced for the
same dwell time as an FFH-only system.
CDMA
Qualcomm Inc. of California have pioneered the use of
CDMA techniques in cellular radio systems and set up
trials in 1991 involving 70 mobiles in order to test fully-
loaded cells. Conflicting claims for cell capacity have
frequently been made for time, frequency and code
division multiple access (TDMA, FDMA and CDMA)
systems. It should be noted that it is the total Qualcomm
system which gives the required performance and not
simply the use of CDMA alone. For example, a major
advantage for DS/SS is that the same spectrum is reused in
every single cell; users are separated by the CDMA
operation. It is also possible with CDMA to exploit the
voice activity gain whereby the transmitter is muted during
periods of silence. It is not possible to exploit this in FDMA
or TDMA systems because the necessary channel
reassignments cannot be performed asynchronously. A
typicalvoice duty cycle is35%,so for CDMAthe transmitter
is only active for a fraction of the time and this reduces the
average mutual interference between users and increases
the CDMA efficiency by a factor of 2. Cell sectorisation
11
(achieved by base antenna design) allows a further
increase in the number of u s e r s that can be
accommodated. T h e pilot CDMA system operated in t h e
70 M H z region, and used a PN chip rate of around
1.25MHz.
In o r d e r to take advantage of new and proposed spread-
spectrum radio systems, chips with programmable data
and chip rates from 100bit/s to 64 Mbit/s are now available
which support BPSK, QPSK (quadrature phase-shift
keying), MSK (minimum shift keying) and other
modulation types.
9 Summary
In TH/SS systems, the transmission link can b e easily
disrupted if interference occurs at o r around the c a m e r
frequency; therefore TH is ineffective as an anti-jam
technique. T h e benefit of a’l“ system is in the reduction of
transmitted power. It is easy to implement and provides a
multi-user capability in TDMA applications.
DS/SS systems are lairly straightforward to implement
because the direct modulation process only requires
multiplication of a signal by t h e spreading code. A DS/SS
transmission can b e well-hidden d u e to its energy and
bandwidth spreading properties, making it difficult to
detect and intercept. DS/SS h a s good anti-jam properties
and can b e used in code division multiple access (CDMA)
systems. Fast PN code generators are possible and
the PN code rate dictates how wide t h e bandwidth of a DS
signal is.
T h e main disadvantage of DS/SS is its poor near-far
performance. This is a problem when t h e r e are very strong
unwanted signals near to t h e receiver, which cause
blocking of weaker signals since DS signals occupy a
continuous spectrum around the carrier. In a cellular
network, mutual interference between u s e r s is minimised
by carelul power control at each transmitter.
Frequency-hopping spread-spectrum has some
properties that are complementary to DS/SS. Of all t h e SS
techniques described, the greatest amount of bandwidth
spreading is normally achieved by FH/SS. Unlike DS,
which h a s a continuous spectrum, FH can b e designed to
reside in a noncontinuous spectrum a s shown in Fig. 4
This is a n advantage because it means that o t h e r
transmissions in t h e s a m e part of the spectrum can b e
accommodated, for example an F H transmitter can be
made to avoid known television transmissions. FH/SS h a s
a good near-far performance. F H can b e used quite
effectively a s an anti-jamming technique and, if operated at
a high speed, it is difficult for afollowerjammer to interfere
with t h e transmission. T h e r e a r c difficulties in
implementing highly portable FH/SS systems with fast
h o p rates since t h e switching speed required of the
frequency synthesiser normally implies a complex design.
Careful shaping of the transmitted pulse is required if
sidebands and spurious responses are to b e minimised.
T h e availability of direct digital synthesisers @DS)
m a k e s fast frequency hopping feasible SinCC switching
speeds of well below 1 PS are possible, but Power
consumption is high at fast clock speeds and the output
12 ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING JOURNAL FEBRUARY 1994
purity of DDS devices is not as good a s for conventional
direct synthesis.
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0IEE:1994
First received 20th Novrmber 1992 and in final form 13th
December 1993
~
meauthors with the Department oIElectronic and Electrical
Engineering,King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2L’,
UK.