V ol. 18 No.

2 CH INES E JO U RN A L O F AER ON A U TICS M ay 2005

Study on Fast Acquisition of Hybrid DS/ FHSS

ZHANG Bo, SHAO Ding rong, T arek S. ELHABIAN

( School of El ectroni cs and I nf or mat ion, Beij ing Uni versity of A eronautics and A stronautics,
Beij ing 100083 , Chi na)

Abstract: In hy brid Direct Sequence/ F requency Hopping Spread Spectrum ( DS/ FH SS) system, the
fast acquisition is a key technique. A combined fast scanning and waiting method for FH acquisition is
introduced, and a neural networ k for DS acquisition is presented also. U sing these tw o methods, the fast
acquisition of the hybr id DS/ FH SS system can be realized.
Key words: spread spectrum; acquisition; frequency identification; neural netw ork; direct sequence/
frequency hopping
DS/ FH 混合扩频快速捕获技术的 研究. 张波, 邵定蓉, T arek S. ELHA BIAN . 中国航空学报( 英文
版) , 2005, 18( 2) : 161- 165.
摘 要: 在 DS/ FH 混合扩频通信系统中, 快速捕获是一个 非常关键的 技术。通过采 用快速扫 描和
等待式相结合的方法用 来实 现跳 频信号 的快 速捕获, 利 用神 经网络 技术 实现直 扩信 号的 快速 捕
获, 通过这 2 种方式, 就可实现 DS/ FH 混合扩频的快速捕获。
关键词: 扩频通信; 捕获; 频率识别; 神经网络; 直序扩频/ 跳频
文章编号: 1000 9361( 2005) 02 0161 05 中图分类号: T N 914. 4 文献标识码: A

Hybrid direct sequence/ f requency hopping
spread spect rum ( DS/ FHSS ) signals are w idely
used in the civil and military communicat ions for it s
g ood propert ies in terms of: low probabilit y of in
t ercept ion, long er t ransm it ting distance, eliminat
ing far and near jam, overcoming multi address ef
f ect s, and so on. F ast synchronization plays a v it al
role, and tw o processes are performed at the receiv
er: acquisit ion and t racking [ 1] . In t his paper, all
the at tent ion is focused on the acquisition process
ing problem. T here are t wo processes: DS acquisi
t ion and FH acquisit ion. DS acquisit ion is to make
the phase error wit hin half chip ( T c/ 2, T c is one
PN code duration) ; and FH acquisition is to scan
the frequency patt erns and f ind out the correct fre
quency of t he arrived sig nals.
In t he earlier days ( about t he end of last cen
t ury) , and since then, a successful hybrid DS/ FH/
T H SS system JT IDS ( Joint T actical Informat ion
Dist ribut ion System) has been w idely used in t he
U S m ilitary communicat ions. As an act ive service
communicat ion system, the kernel t echnology, es
pecially the FH acquisit ion met hod, is st ill kept se
R eceived dat e: 2004 06 28; R evision received dat e: 2005 01 25
cret, and can not be found in t he published m ateri
als. Com paring w it h t he JT IDS, the DS P N codes
in hybrid DS/ FHSS systems may be very long ( t he
periods of PN code are only 32 bit s in JT IDS) , so
the difficult y of realizing f ast acquisit ion is in
creased.
In Ref . [ 2] , a fast scanning met hod used for
FH acquisit ion w as int roduced. Although t he FH
acquisit ion time can be decreased, more time is in
need of verif icat ion.
T o overcome the demerits of t he m et hod used
in Ref . [ 2] , a fast scanning and w ait ing method
used for FH signals acquisit ion of Hy brid DS/ FH
system is proposed in this paper. In this met hod,
the verif icat ion process is done in t he DS acquisit ion
processing, and can be complet ed in one FH hop
time, so t hat t he FH signal acquisit ion t ime can be
decreased signif icant ly.
Because t he verification of the FH signals ac
quisit ion should be complet ed in one hop t ime, t he
DS acquisit ion rat e should be fast also. DM F ( Dig
it al M at ched Filt er) is w idely used now on DS sig
nal acquisit ion. It can m ake t he acquisition finish in

© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
 ∀ 162 ∀ ZHAN G Bo, SHAO Ding rong, T AREK S. Elhabian
one PN code period t heoret ically. How ever, it w ill
cost more t ime in low SNR situat ion. T here w ill be
a larg e phase error bet ween incoming and local sig
nals w hen using DM F that w ill increase t he acquisi
t ion time sig nificant ly. In this study, a tw o layer
neural net w ork w ith part icular training met hod is
adopt ed to improve t he detect ion probabilit ies in
low SNR, and a Counter Propagation Net work
( CPN ) w it h t he Feed Forw ard algorit hm used for
training is also proposed w hich can improve the dy
namic range of the syst em and decrease t he DS sig
nal acquisition time easily.
1 F ast FH Acquisit ion Using the Fast
Scanning and W aiting M ethod
T he t ypical FH signal acquisit ion met hod is
the w aiting method[ 2] : the receiver s frequency
sy nt hesizer is controlled to emit a cert ain frequency
f n , and w ait for the corresponding f requency f n
of t he incom ing signals. When t he signal wit h t he
correct frequency f n is got , an int ermediat e fre
quency signal is got aft er t hese tw o signals correla
t ion, and aft er demodulat ion, an acquisit ion signal
can be got . If t he sig nal is higher t han t he
threshold t h , t he local frequency synthesizer st art s
to hop from f n according t o the frequency patt erns.
Aft er several hops, if t he acquisit ion signals
exceed t he threshold th , it means t hat the acquisi
t ion is succeeded. T his met hod is very usef ul for
short frequency patt ern FH Systems, but w hen t he
frequency patt ern is long, it w ill cost more time.
Based on t he met hod int roduced in Ref. [ 2] , a
fast scanning and w ait ing method is proposed to re
alize the f ast FH acquisition of t he hy brid DS/
FH SS syst em . In t his m et hod, the local frequency
sy nt hesizer works in t hree modes: fast scanning
F ig. 1
© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
CJA
mode, w aiting mode and normal mode. At f irst , it
works at t he f ast scanning mode, and the frequen
cy s hopping rat e is higher t han t he incoming ones
to match w ith t he incoming f requency. When t he
mat ch is realized, it changes to w ait ing mode im
mediat ely, and w hen t he synchronizat ion informa
t ion f rom the DS demodulat ion system is got , t he
local synt hesizer s hopping rat e is chang ed t o nor
mal one. For example, if t he incoming signal s
frequency patt ern is { f 1 , f 2 , f 3 , f 4 , f 5 , f 6 , f 7 , f 8 ,
f 9, f 10 , f 11 , f 12 , f 13 , f 14 , f 15 , f 16 } , t he local fre
quency pat tern is t he same but t he hopping rat e is 4
times of the incoming ones at f irst , as show n in
Fig 1. At that time, t he incoming frequency se
quence is f 6 , f 7 , f 8 , !, and t he local sequence is
f1, f 2 , f3 , f 4 , f5, f6 , f 7 , f 8 , !. When
the frequency of the incoming signal is f 6 , and t he
local one is f 1 , t here is no sig nal out put which can
be sent t o t he DS circuit , so the correlat ion peak
can not be got aft er the DS signal s acquisit ion.
T hen local frequency hops to f 2 , and no correla
t ion peak also. F rom t he beg inning t o f 7 , tot ally
needs T h + 2T h / 4( T h is one hop durat ion) time,
the incoming frequency m at ches w it h t he local one
( f 7 mat ches w ith f 7 ) . When the correlat ion peak
is g ot , it is st ill not sure t hat t he acquisit ion is
all complet ed, maybe it is a false one, and it needs t o
be verified, t hat is to say, aft er 2- 3 DS PN code
periods, if t he correlat ion peaks all exceed t he
threshold, the FH acquisit ion can be said complet
ed, then local frequency hops t o f 8 , st at us is
changed to t he waiting mode. When the synchro
nizat ion informat ion is got f rom t he DS demodula
t ion syst em, t he local sy nt hesizer s hopping rate is
changed to t he norm al one. In t his way, the FH
acquisit ion t ime can be decreased signif icantly.
FH acquisit ion method
 M ay 2005 S tudy on Fast Acquisition of Hybrid DS / FHSS
2 Fast DS Acquisition U sing Neural Net
work
As it is discussed above, the acquisit ion and
verificat ion of the DS signal acquisition should be
complet ed in T h / 4 t ime. T ypical DS signal acquisi
t ion includes t hree met hods: serial method, parallel
met hod and hybrid m et hod[ 3] . T he acquisit ion
time is rat her long w hen using a serial method[ 4]
and t he detect ion probabilit y is low, so t he parallel
[ 5]
met hod is proposed . In recent years, t he appli
cat ion of neural netw orks in pat tern recognit ion,
dig it al signal processing, as w ell as in digital com
munications, have been st udied increasingly [ 6, 7] .
In t his paper, a Count er Propagat ion Net work
( CPN) method is proposed. It is used in t he com
binat ion of t wo w ell know n netw orks, Kohonen
net work and Grooberg net work, which are all feed
forward net works. Aft er analyzing t he structure
and t raining method, the simulat ion shows t hat
even in the SNR of - 27 738 dB, t he correlat ion
peak can st ill be g ot .
2. 1 Neural network acquisiti on model
T he structure of t he acquisit ion model is
shown in Fig 2, T he PN code is sent t o the neural
F ig. 2 DS acquisit ion block diag ram
net work first, af ter t raining , in a certain time,
w hen the init ial phase of the incom ing PN code is
g ot , the local PN code generat or starts, and corre
lat es w ith the incom ing ones. If t he correlat ion
peak exceeds the t hreshold 3 t imes, t he DS acquisi
t ion is com pleted, a message is g iven t o the FH ac
© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
∀ 163 ∀
quisit ion circuit , and the local f requency synt hesiz
er s st at us is changed from scanning mode t o w ait
ing mode. If not , t he PN code g enerat or is
stopped, and t he neural netw ork works again.
F or simulation, a PN code of 256 chips long is
select ed, and constructed by a Gold P N code of 255
periods long added a # 0∃. T he main purpose of t he
DS acquisit ion is t o make the phase error less than
T c/ 2, so t he PN code can be made t wice t o simu
late the w hole 512 phase errors bet ween the incom
ing and local PN code.
2. 2 Training of Kohonen layer
T he input layer is a shif t reg ist er, and t he PN
code is shif ted f rom the lef t t o right serially. T he
Kohonen layer works in a w inner t ake all m an
ner [ 8] , and this means t hat for a given input vec
t or, only one Kohonen neuron out put s a logical # 1∃
and all ot hers output # 0∃. As shown in Fig 2,
each neuron in t he input layer connects t o every
neurons in t he Kohonen layer mult iplying w ith dif
f erent w eight s w ij , w here i , j = 1, 2, !, 2N . T he
Kohonen neuron out put K i is sim ply t he summa
t ion of t he weig ht inputs and can be def ined in ma
t rix form as
K1 W 1, 1 W 1, 2 ! W 1, 2N C1
K2 W 2, 1 W 2, 2 ! W 2, 2N C2
=
K 2N W 2N , 1 W 2N , 2 ! W 2N , 2N C 2N
( 1)
where ( K 1 , K 2 , . . . , K 2N ) is t he output of t he
Kohonen layer, matrix W are t he weig ht s af ter
training, and ( C 1 , C 2 , . . . , C 2N ) is t he input PN
code. Af ter being compared, t he largest out put is
def ined as # 1∃ and the other ones are def ined as
# 0∃ and are sent t o t he Grossberg layer.
T he t raining w ay is that each element of t he
weig ht matrix W is g iven a small random value in
order 2N % 2N . For each PN shif t, the input pat
t ern is represented by vector of 2N elements ( C 1 ,
C 2 , . . . , C 2N ) , and each input vect or C i is normal
ized before apply ing to t he Kohonen layer. T hen
the weig ht vector is adjust ed as
W i = W i- 1 + ( C i - W i- 1 ) ( 2)
 ∀ 164 ∀ ZHAN G Bo, SHAO Ding rong, T AREK S. Elhabian CJA

w here is a t raining rat e coef ficient and usually

& 0 7. It is apparent from Eq. ( 2) t hat the Koho
nen neuron K i w hose w eight vector is most similar
to the input vect or is act ually select ed f rom t he
training process. At last the above steps are repeat
ed t o each P N code phase error t o calculat e W.
2. 3 Training of Grossberg layer
T he grossberg layer is connected betw een t he
Kohonen layer and t he out put lay er, so the main
purpose of t his layer is to map the winner neuron
( b) Out put of K ohon en layer w hen applying t he PN code
number at Kohonen lay er t o t he PN code phase er phase error of 200
ror number. As the Kohonen layer, t raining of t he Fig . 3 Output of K ohonen layer w hen applying different
Grossberg layer is g iving ! each element of t he PN code phase er ror
w eight matrix V a small random value in order 2N
errors are 50, 200 respect ively and no noise is
% M first, and the whole PN code shifts are 512,
added, t he out put of t he Kononen layer is show n in
so M ( t he lengt h of t his layer s output) is 9 bit and
Fig 3.
the w hole number of phase errors of 512 can be
When adding noise, t he corresponding cross
represent ed by it . Because only neuron K i of Ko
correlat ions betw een each of them and t he t rained
honen layer s out put is # 1∃ aft er t raining, t he ot h
weig ht m at rix vectors can be seen in Fig 4. T he
ers are all # 0∃, and t he w eight vector V i can be de
f ined as
V ij , new = V ij , old + !( Y j - V ij , old ) K i ( 3)
w here K i is the output of Kohonen neuron i ( only
one Kohonen neuron is nonzero) , Yj is the compo
nent j of t he vect or of desired outputs, and ! ini
t ially is set to approx imat ely 0 1 and is gradually
reduced.
2. 4 Experiment and result
T he PN code periods of this syst em is 256, so
there are 512 phase errors bet ween the incoming ( a) O ut put of K ohonen layer w hen applying th e PN code
phase error of 50 w hen S/ N is - 5 218 dB
and local signals. Aft er t raining , a w eight m at rix
W of Kohonen layer can be got . When t he phase

( b) O ut put of K ohonen layer when applying t he PN code

phase error of 50 w hen S / N is - 27 738 dB
( a) O ut put of K ohon en layer w hen applying t he PN code
Fig . 4 Output of Kohonen layer when applying the PN
phase error of 50
code phase error is 50 with different S/ N ratios

© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
 M ay 2005 S tudy on Fast Acquisition of Hybrid DS / FHSS
PN code phase errors of t he t wo simulations are all
50, and t he S/ N ratios are - 5 218 dB and
- 27 738 dB. F rom t he Fig 4, it can be seen t hat
even in the SNR of - 27 738 dB, t he correlat ion
peak can st ill be g ot .
3 Conclusions
In hybrid DS/ FH SS system, a combined f ast
scanning and waiting m et hod is introduced. If t he
frequency synthesizer s scanning rat e is X times of
the incoming ones, t he acquisit ion t ime can be de
creased X t imes. But X is dependent on the DS
signal s acquisit ion performance, so a neural net
w ork of CPN is discussed also. T he simulat ion
shows t hat, even in low SNR, a w ell result st ill
can be got af ter t raining . F ig 5 shows t he mean
Fig . 5 M ean acquisition times of using the waiting
method and the fast scanning and waiting
method
acquisit ion t ime using t he w ait ing met hod and t he
fast scanning and w ait ing met hod, N = 4, DS PN
code period is 256, S/ N ratio is - 15 dB, t he ver
t ical ax is presents the mean acquisit ion t ime ( ms) ,
the horizontal axis presents t he normalized thresh
old, by choosing t he appropriate t hreshold, and t he
mean acquisit ion t ime wit h t he fast scanning and
w ait ing met hod is almost 1/ 4 time of t he one w ith
w ait ing met hod. So the methods used here are very
useful for t he hybrid DS/ FH SS syst em applica
t ions. Calculat ion of the hybrid DS/ FHSS system
s mean acquisit ion t ime w ith t hese tw o methods
© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
∀ 165 ∀
will be present ed in anot her paper.
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Biographies:
ZHANG Bo Bor n in 1972, he received M . S. from Beijing
University of A er onautics and Astronautics ( BU AA ) in
1997, and he is now a Dcotor student at BUA A. T el: 010
82339208, E mail: socoolnick@ yahoo. com. cn
SHAO Ding rong Born in 1937, he graduated from Beijing
A ero nautical Institute in 1962. From 1980 to 1983, he w as
engaged in the resear ch on carrier free radar as a visiting
scholar at the Catholic U niversity of America, Washing ton,
DC, USA. He is a professor of t he Schoo l o f Electronics and
Information of BU AA. T el: 010 69759951, E mail: shaod
ingrong@ hotmail. com
Tarek S. ELHABIAN Born in1966, Cair o, Egypt. He re
ceived the B. S. degree in computer science form M ilitary
T echnical Colleg e, Cairo, Egypt in 1988 and M . S. degree
fro m A in Shams U niv ersity, Cairo, Egypt in 2000. He is
now a Doctor student at Beijing U niversity of Aeronautics
and Astr onautics( BU AA ) . E mail: T areksalah2002@ hot
mail. com