Spread Spectrum

Technique

Chapter 3
2 Introduction
 In 1985, the FCC modified Part 15 of the radio
spectrum regulation
Governs unlicensed devices
Attempt to stimulate the production and use of
wireless network products
 The modification authorized wireless network
products to operate in the Industrial, Scientific, and
Medical (ISM) bands using spread spectrum
modulation
902 - 928 MHz
2.4 - 2.4835 GHz
5.725 - 5.850 GHz
3 Introduction
 FCC allows users to operate wireless products
without obtaining licenses if the products meet certain
requirements
e.g., Operation under 1 watt transmitter output
power
 This deregulation of the frequency spectrum
eliminates
Need to perform costly and time-consuming
frequency planning to avoid interference with
existing radio systems
Need to license product again at a new location (if
equipment is moved)
4 Spread Spectrum Encoding
• Digital Signal
 Digital data
• Analog Signal

• Digital Signal
 Analog data
• Analog Signal

 Which option to choose?

 Requirements to meet
 Media & communications facilities

 Spread Spectrum
 Can be used to transmit either analog or digital data,
using an analog signal
5 Spread Spectrum

 Input is fed into a channel encoder

 Produces analog signal with narrow
bandwidth
 Signal is further modulated using
sequence of digits
 Spreading code or spreading sequence
 Generated by pseudonoise, or pseudo-
random number generator
 Effect of modulation is to increase
bandwidth of signal to be transmitted
 Spread Spectrum
6

 On receiving end, digit sequence is used

to demodulate the spread spectrum signal
 Signal is fed into a channel decoder to
recover data
7 Spread Spectrum
 What can be gained from apparent waste
of spectrum?
 Immunity from various kinds of noise and multipath
distortion
Anti-jamming performance
Interference immunity
 Can be used for hiding and encrypting signals
Low probability of intercept
Low transmit power density
 Several users can independently use the same
higher bandwidth with very little interference
Multiple access communications
Multiple simultaneous transmissions
8 Types of Spread Spectrum

Frequency Hopping Spread

Spectrum (FHSS)
First type developed
Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum
(DSSS)
More recent technology
9 Frequency Hopping SS

 Signal is broadcast over seemingly random

series of radio frequencies
 A number of channels allocated for the FH
signal
 Width of each channel corresponds to
bandwidth of input signal
 Signal hops from frequency to frequency at
fixed intervals
 Transmitter operates in one channel at a time
 Bits are transmitted using some encoding
scheme
 At each successive interval, a new carrier
frequency is selected
10 Frequency Hopping SS

Source: http://murray.newcastle.edu.au/users/staff/eemf/ELEC351/SProjects/Morris/types.htm
Frequency Hopping Spread
Spectrum System (Transmitter)
Frequency Hopping Spread
Spectrum System (Receiver)
Slow and Fast FHSS

 Frequency shifted every Tc seconds

 Duration of signal element is Ts seconds
 Slow FHSS has Tc  Ts
 Fast FHSS has Tc < Ts
 Generally fast FHSS gives improved performance in
noise (or jamming)
14 Frequency Hopping SS
 Hopping Sequence
 Channel sequence dictated by spreading code
Pseudorandom number serves as an index into a table
of frequencies
 Chip Period
 Time spent on each channel
FCC regulation  maximum dwell time of 400 ms
IEEE 802.11 standard  300 ms
 Chipping rate
 Hopping rate
15 Frequency Hopping SS

Receiver, hopping between

frequencies in synchronization with
transmitter, picks up message
Advantages
Eavesdroppers hear only unintelligible
blips
Attempts to jam signal on one
frequency succeed only at knocking
out a few bits
16 FHSS Performance
Considerations
Large number of frequencies used
Results in a system that is quite
resistant to jamming
Jamming signal must jam all
frequencies
With fixed power, this reduces the
jamming power in any one frequency
band
Jamming margin (dB)=(processing gain(dB) – 10 log (Eb/No)min)
17 Direct Sequence SS

 Each bit in original signal is

represented by multiple bits in the
transmitted signal
 Spreading code spreads signal across a
wider frequency band
 Spread is in direct proportion to the
number of bits used
 One technique combines digital
information stream with the
spreading code bit stream using
exclusive-OR
18 Direct Sequence SS

Source: http://www.sss-mag.com/primer.html

Source: http://murray.newcastle.edu.au/users/staff/eemf/ELEC351/SProjects/Morris/types.htm
19 Direct Sequence SS
20 Processing Gain

 Unique property of spread specturm waveforms

 Used to measure the performance advantage of
spread spectrum against narrowband forms
21 Processing Gain in FHSS
 Processing Gain in DHSS
22

In a DS system
Random binary data has a bit rate of Rb
The pseudorandom binary waveform has a
rate of Rc

Required
Modulation (Eb/No)dB GdB (Eb/No)dB
PSK
BPSK
 Code-Division Multiple Access
23

 CDMA is a channel access method used by various

radio communication technology
 Example of multiple access

 several transmitters can send information

simultaneously over a single communication
channels
 Allow several users to share a band of frequencies
 To permit this without undue interference between
the users, CDMA employs spread spectrum
techniques and special coding scheme
 Code-Division Multiple Access
24

 Simultaneous transmission
 Signal orthogonal to each other
 Code-Division Multiple Access
25

Basic Principles of CDMA

Start with a data signal with rate D
Break each bit into k chips
Chips are a user-specific fixed pattern
Chip data rate of new channel = kD
 Code-Division Multiple Access
26

Advantage
Good protection against interference and
tapping
Disadvantages
Receiver must be precisely synchronized with
the transmitter to apply the decoding
correctly
Receiver must know the code and must
separate the channel with user data from the
background noise composed of other signals
and environmental noise
27 Code-Division Multiple
Access

Application

Is used as the access method in many

mobile phone standards such as
cdmaOne, CDMA 2000 (the 3G evolution
of cdmaOne) and WCDMA (the 3G
standard used by GSM carriers), which are
often referred to as simply CDMA.
28 CDMA Example

 If k=6 and code is a sequence of 1s and

-1s
 For a ‘1’ bit, A sends code as chip pattern
 <c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6>
 For a ‘0’ bit, A sends complement of code
 <-c1, -c2, -c3, -c4, -c5, -c6>
 Receiver knows sender’s code and
performs electronic decode function
Su d   d1 c1  d 2  c2  d 3  c3  d 4  c4  d 5  c5  d 6  c6
 <d1, d2, d3, d4, d5, d6> = received chip pattern
 <c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6> = sender’s code
29 CDMA Example
 User A code = <1, –1, –1, 1, –1, 1>
 To send a 1 bit = <1, –1, –1, 1, –1, 1>
 To send a 0 bit = <–1, 1, 1, –1, 1, –1>
 User B code = <1, 1, –1, – 1, 1, 1>
 To send a 1 bit = <1, 1, –1, –1, 1, 1>
 Receiver receiving with A’s code
 (A’s code) x (received chip pattern)
User A ‘1’ bit: 6 -> 1
User A ‘0’ bit: -6 -> 0
User B ‘1’ bit: 0 -> unwanted signal ignored
30 CDMA for DSSS
31 Rake Receiver

•A rake receiver is a radio receiver designed to counter the effects

of multipath fading.

•It does this by using several "sub-receivers" called fingers, that is,
several correlators each assigned to a different multipath component.

•Each finger independently decodes a single multipath component; at a

later stage the contribution of all fingers are combined in order to make
the most use of the different transmission characteristics of each
transmission path.

•This could very well result in higher signal-to-noise ratio (or Eb/N0) in a
multipath environment than in a "clean" environment.
32

•A Rake receiver utilizes multiple correlators to separately detect

M strongest multipath components. Each correlator may be
quantized using 1, 2, 3 or 4 bits.

•The outputs of each correlator are weighted to provide better

estimate of the transmitted signal than is provided by a single
component. Demodulation and bit decisions are then based on
the weighted outputs of the M correlators

•Rake receivers are common in a wide variety of CDMA and W-

CDMA radio devices such as mobile phones and wireless
LAN equipment.