09 spread spectrum

Editor's Notes

• #2: Lecture slides prepared by Dr Lawrie Brown (UNSW@ADFA) for “Data and Computer Communications”, 8/e, by William Stallings, Chapter 9 “Spread Spectrum”.
• #3: This quote is from the start of Stallings DCC8e Ch9.
• #4: Spread spectrum is an increasingly important form of encoding for wireless communications. It it can be used to transmit either analog or digital data, using an analog signal.The basic idea of spread spectrum is to modulate the signal so as to increase significantly the bandwidth (spread the spectrum) of the signal to be transmitted. It was initially developed for military and intelligence requirements. The use of spread spectrum makes jamming and interception more difficult and provides improved reception. The first type of spread spectrum developed is known as frequency hopping. A more recent type of spread spectrum is direct sequence. Both of these techniques are used in various wireless communications standards and products.
• #5: Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.1 highlights the key characteristics of any spread spectrum system. Input is fed into a channel encoder that produces an analog signal with a relatively narrow bandwidth around some center frequency. This signal is further modulated using a sequence of digits known as a spreading code or spreading sequence. Typically, but not always, the spreading code is generated by a pseudonoise, or pseudorandom number, generator. The effect of this modulation is to increase significantly the bandwidth (spread the spectrum) of the signal to be transmitted. On the receiving end, the same digit sequence is used to demodulate the spread spectrum signal. Finally, the signal is fed into a channel decoder to recover the data.
• #6: Several advantages can be gained from this apparent waste of spectrum by this approach: • The signals gains immunity from various kinds of noise and multipath distortion. The earliest applications of spread spectrum were military, where it was used for its immunity to jamming. • It can also be used for hiding and encrypting signals. Only a recipient who knows the spreading code can recover the encoded information. • Several users can independently use the same higher bandwidth with very little interference. This property is used in cellular telephony applications, with a technique know as code division multiplexing (CDM) or code division multiple access (CDMA).
• #7: A comment about pseudorandom numbers is in order. These numbers are generated by an algorithm using some initial value called the seed. The algorithm is deterministic and therefore produces sequences of numbers that are not statistically random. However, if the algorithm is good, the resulting sequences will pass many reasonable tests of randomness. Such numbers are often referred to as pseudorandom numbers. The important point is that unless you know the algorithm and the seed, it is impractical to predict the sequence. Hence, only a receiver that shares this information with a transmitter will be able to decode the signal successfully.
• #8: With frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS), the signal is broadcast over a seemingly random series of radio frequencies, hopping from frequency to frequency at fixed intervals. A receiver, hopping between frequencies in synchronization with the transmitter, picks up the message. Would-be eavesdroppers hear only unintelligible blips. Attempts to jam the signal on one frequency succeed only at knocking out a few bits of it.
• #9: Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.2 shows an example of a frequency-hopping signal. A number of channels are allocated for the FH signal. Typically, there are 2 k carrier frequencies forming 2 k channels. The spacing between carrier frequencies and hence the width of each channel usually corresponds to the bandwidth of the input signal. The transmitter operates in one channel at a time for a fixed interval; for example, the IEEE 802.11 standard uses a 300-ms interval. During that interval, some number of bits (possibly a fraction of a bit, as discussed subsequently) is transmitted using some encoding scheme. A spreading code dictates the sequence of channels used. Both transmitter and receiver use the same code to tune into a sequence of channels in synchronization.
• #10: Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.3 shows a typical block diagram for a frequency-hopping system. For transmission, binary data are fed into a modulator using some digital-to-analog encoding scheme, such as frequency shift keying (FSK) or binary phase shift keying (BPSK). The resulting signal s d ( t ) is centered on some base frequency. A pseudonoise (PN), or pseudorandom number, source serves as an index into a table of frequencies; this is the spreading code referred to previously. Each k bits of the PN source specifies one of the 2 k carrier frequencies. At each successive interval (each k PN bits), a new carrier frequency is selected. The frequency synthesizer generates a constant-frequency tone whose frequency hops among a set of 2 k frequencies, with the hopping pattern determined by k bits from the PN sequence. This is known as the spreading or chipping signal c ( t ). This is then modulated by the signal produced from the initial modulator to produce a new signal with the same shape but now centered on the selected carrier frequency. A bandpass filter is used to block the difference frequency and pass the sum frequency, yielding the final FHSS signal s ( t ).
• #11: On reception, Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.3 shows that the spread spectrum signal is demodulated using the same sequence of PN-derived frequencies and then demodulated to produce the output data. At the receiver, a signal of the form s ( t ) defined on the previous slide, will be received. This is multiplied by a replica of the spreading signal to yield a product signal. A bandpass filter is used to block the sum frequency and pass the difference frequency, which is then demodulated to recover the binary data.
• #12: A common modulation technique used in conjunction with FHSS is multiple FSK (MFSK), which uses M = 2 L different frequencies to encode the digital input L bits at a time (see Chapter 5). For FHSS, the MFSK signal is translated to a new frequency every T c seconds by modulating the MFSK signal with the FHSS carrier signal. The effect is to translate the MFSK signal into the appropriate FHSS channel. For a data rate of R , the duration of a bit is T = 1/ R seconds and the duration of a signal element is T s = LT seconds. If T c is greater than or equal to T s , the spreading modulation is referred to as slow-frequency-hop spread spectrum; otherwise it is known as fast-frequency-hop spread spectrum. Typically, a large number of frequencies is used in FHSS so that bandwidth of the FHSS signal is much larger than that of the original MFSK signal . One benefit of this is that a large value of k results in a system that is quite resistant to jamming. If frequency hopping is used, the jammer must jam all 2 k frequencies. With a fixed power, this reduces the jamming power in any one frequency band to S j /2 k . In general, fast FHSS provides improved performance compared to slow FHSS in the face of noise or jamming, as will discuss shortly.
• #13: Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.4 shows an example of slow FHSS, using the MFSK example from Stallings DCC8e Figure 5.9. Here we have M = 4, which means that four different frequencies are used to encode the data input 2 bits at a time. Each signal element is a discrete frequency tone, and the total MFSK bandwidth is W d = Mf d . We use an FHSS scheme with k = 2. That is, there are 4 = 2 k different channels, each of width W d . The total FHSS bandwidth is W s = 2 k W d . Each 2 bits of the PN sequence is used to select one of the four channels. That channel is held for a duration of two signal elements, or four bits ( T c = 2 T s = 4 T ).
• #14: Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.5 shows an example of fast FHSS, using the same MFSK example. Again, M = 4 and k = 2. In this case, however, each signal element is represented by two frequency tones. Again, W d = Mf d and W s = 2 k W d . In this example T s = 2 T c = 2 T . In general, fast FHSS provides improved performance compared to slow FHSS in the face of noise or jamming. For example, if three or more frequencies (chips) are used for each signal element, the receiver can decide which signal element was sent on the basis of a majority of the chips being correct.
• #15: With direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS), each bit in the original signal is represented by multiple bits in the transmitted signal, using a spreading code. The spreading code spreads the signal across a wider frequency band in direct proportion to the number of bits used. Therefore, a 10-bit spreading code spreads the signal across a frequency band that is 10 times greater than a 1-bit spreading code.
• #16: One technique with direct sequence spread spectrum is to combine the digital information stream with the spreading code bit stream using an exclusive-OR (XOR). Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.6 shows an example. Note that an information bit of one inverts the spreading code bits in the combination, while an information bit of zero causes the spreading code bits to be transmitted without inversion. The combination bit stream has the data rate of the original spreading code sequence, so it has a wider bandwidth than the information stream. In this example, the spreading code bit stream is clocked at four times the information rate.
• #17: To see how this technique works out in practice, assume that a BPSK modulation scheme is to be used. Rather than represent binary data with 1 and 0, it is more convenient for our purposes to use +1 and –1 to represent the two binary digits. To produce the DSSS signal, we multiply the BPSK signal by c ( t ), which is the PN sequence taking on values of +1 and –1: s ( t ) = A d ( t ) c ( t ) cos(2π f c t ) : Equation (9.5) At the receiver, the incoming signal is multiplied again by c ( t ). But c ( t )  c ( t ) = 1 and therefore the original signal is recovered. Equation (9.5) can be interpreted in two ways, leading to two different implementations. The first interpretation is to first multiply d ( t ) and c ( t ) together and then perform the BPSK modulation. That is the interpretation we have been discussing. Alternatively, we can first perform the BPSK modulation on the data stream d ( t ) to generate the data signal s d ( t ). This signal can then be multiplied by c ( t ). An implementation using the second interpretation is shown in Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.7 above.
• #18: Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.8 is an example of the approach discussed on the previous slide.
• #19: The spectrum spreading achieved by the direct sequence technique is easily determined ( Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.9 above). In our example, the information signal has a bit width of T , which is equivalent to a data rate of 1/ T . In that case, the spectrum of the signal, depending on the encoding technique, is roughly 2/ T . Similarly, the spectrum of the PN signal is 2/ T c . Figure 9.9c shows the resulting spectrum spreading. The amount of spreading that is achieved is a direct result of the data rate of the PN stream. As with FHSS, we can get some insight into the performance of DSSS by looking at its effectiveness against jamming. Let us assume a simple jamming signal at the center frequency of the DSSS system. Can show the carrier power S j is spread over a bandwidth of approximately 2/ T c . However, the BPSK demodulator (Figure 9.7) following the DSSS despreader includes a bandpass filter matched to the BPSK data, with bandwidth of 2/ T . Thus, most of the jamming power is filtered. The jamming power has been reduced by a factor of ( T c / T ) through the use of spread spectrum. The result is similar to the result for FHSS.
• #20: CDMA is a multiplexing technique used with spread spectrum. The scheme works in the following manner. We start with a data signal with rate D , which we call the bit data rate. We break each bit into k chips according to a fixed pattern that is specific to each user, called the user’s code, or chipping code . The new channel has a chip data rate, or chipping rate , of kD chips per second. With CDMA, the receiver can sort out transmission from the desired sender, even when there may be other users broadcasting in the same cell.
• #21: As an illustration we consider a simple example with k = 6. It is simplest to characterize a chipping code as a sequence of 1s and –1s. Figure 9.10 shows the codes for three users, A, B, and C, each of which is communicating with the same base station receiver, R. Thus, the code for user A is c A = <1, –1, –1, 1, –1, 1>. Similarly, user B has code c B = <1, 1, –1, –1, 1, 1>, and user C has c C = <1, 1, –1, 1, 1, –1>. We now consider the case of user A communicating with the base station. The base station is assumed to know A’s code. For simplicity, we assume that communication is already synchronized so that the base station knows when to look for codes. If A wants to send a 1 bit, A transmits its code as a chip pattern <1, –1, –1, 1, –1, 1>. If a 0 bit is to be sent, A transmits the complement (1s and –1s reversed) of its code, <–1, 1, 1, –1, 1, –1>. At the base station the receiver decodes the chip patterns. If the decoder is linear and if A and B transmit signals s A and s B , respectively, at the same time, then S A  ( s A + s B ) = S A  ( s A ) + S A  ( s B ) = S A  ( s A ) since the decoder ignores B when it is using A’s code. The codes of A and B that have the property that S A  ( c B ) = S B  ( c A ) = 0 are called orthogonal . Using the decoder, S u , the receiver can sort out transmission from u even when there may be other users broadcasting in the same cell. In practice, the CDMA receiver can filter out the contribution from unwanted users or they appear as low-level noise. However, if there are many users competing for the channel with the user the receiver is trying to listen to, or if the signal power of one or more competing signals is too high, perhaps because it is very near the receiver (the “near/far” problem), the system breaks down.
• #22: Let us now look at CDMA from the viewpoint of a DSSS system using BPSK. Stallings DCC8e Figure 9.11 depicts a configuration in which there are n users, each transmitting using a different, orthogonal, PN sequence (compare Figure 9.7). For each user, the data stream to be transmitted, d i ( t ), is BPSK modulated to produce a signal with a bandwidth of W s and then multiplied by the spreading code for that user, c i ( t ). All of the signals, plus noise, are received at the receiver's antenna. Suppose that the receiver is attempting to recover the data of user 1. The incoming signal is multiplied by the spreading code of user 1 and then demodulated. The effect of this is to narrow the bandwidth of that portion of the incoming signal corresponding to user 1 to the original bandwidth of the unspread signal, which is proportional to the data rate. Incoming signals from other users are not despread by the spreading code from user 1 and hence retain their bandwidth of W s . Thus the unwanted signal energy remains spread over a large bandwidth and the wanted signal is concentrated in a narrow bandwidth. The bandpass filter at the demodulator can therefore recover the desired signal.
• #23: Chapter 9 summary.