Spread Spectrum

(Part 1)

by Erol Seke

For the course “Communications”

ESKİŞEHİR OSMANGAZİ UNIVERSITY

 |X(f)|
f

BW
What is it? :
Making the frequency spectrum of a modulated signal occupy much wider band
than minimum required for the transmission of the information.

|X(f)|
f

>100BW

Why? :
By spreading the signal through a wider frequency spectrum, we
1. Make the signal harder to detect by unintended listeners.
2. Make the signal more robust against intentional or unintentional interference.
3. Obtain better time resolution in applications where the signal is used to
measure the delay in the channel.
4. Do MA (multiple access).
 Multiple Access

TX1 RX1

TX2 Common/Shared RX2

communication
medium

TXN RXM
 Multiple Access

FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access) TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access)
a time slot
f
t
TR1 TR2 TR3 TRN
available frequency band TR1 TR2 TR3 TRN

PDMA (Polarization Division Multiple Access)

SDMA (Space Division Multiple Access)
?
Homework
TR1

TR2 may use same frequencies

 CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access)

Transmitter 1 SS

Code1

Transmitter 2 SS
SS Receiver
Code2
Coden

Transmitter N SS

CodeN

Correlation between PNn and PNm (n≠m) is expected to be zero (orthogonal)

Only the correct signal is recovered at the receiver.
 Protection Against Interference

f
used band

strong narrow band intentional interference

wide band thin intentional interference

fading bands (e.g. atmospheric)

Unless the interference signal is both wide enough and powerful enough, spreading
provides good level of protection against intentional/unintentional attacks.
Spreading Methods

Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS)

Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS)

Time Hopping Spread Spectrum (THSS, OFDM)

Hybrid Methods
 A binary pulse and its mag-frequency spectrum

Carrier with fc is modulated with the random binary pulses ( + ambient noise)

fc

Spectrum of the modulated signal is spread

Unless you know its there, it is a lot difficult to detect its existence and jam transmission
 Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS)

binary stream

spectrum

(pseudo) random code sequence

modulation

spread spectrum
 Despreading

Received Signal

random code sequence (identical to the one at the transmitter)

Regenerated Data Stream

LPF
 modulator modulator

Binary data

Pseudo random Carrier

code generator
transmitter
C
H
A
in sync (probably same) N
N
E
L
receiver
Pseudo random Carrier
code generator

Binary data

demodulator demodulator
 Protection against narrowband interference

Modulated signal spectrum

data

spreaded signal spectrum

Spreading code
carrier

strong interference

coharent carrier
Spreading code

spreaded signal + narrowband noise spectrum

despreaded signal + narrowband noise spectrum

 Pseudorandom Sequences

The PN sequences are deterministic, but have statistical properties similar to sampled white noise

Desired properties of a PN sequence

1. Balance : The numbers of binary zeros and ones in the sequence differs by at most one.
2. Run : Half the runs are 1 chip, 1/4th of the runs are 2 chips, 1/8’th of the runs are 3 chips ...
3. Correlation : Numbers of matches and unmatches differ by at most one when the sequence
is chip by chip compared with its cyclic shifts

runs of ones

runs of zeros
 Shift Register Type PN Sequence Generators

f ( x1 , x2 ,, xL )  c1 x1  c2 x2    cL xL

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 L PN sequence

ci's are either 1 or 0 summations are in modulo-2 arithmetic (XOR)

If the length of the sequence is 2L - 1 then

the sequence is called maximal-length sequence or m-sequence

Example

1 2 3 4 5 SSRG[5,3] PN sequence

0000101011101100011111001101001
L length feedback taps # m-sequences
 Another Example with 4 Registers

Z 1 Z 1 Z 1 Z 1 Output

Modulo 2 adder

1 0 0 0
0 1 0 0
0 0 1 0
1 0 0 1
1 1 0 0
0 1 1 0
1 0 1 1
Cycle 0 1 0 1
1 0 1 0
1 1 0 1
1 1 1 0
1 1 1 1
0 1 1 1
0 0 1 1 We have all possible states for 4
0 0 0 1 registers (except 0000). Such a
1 0 0 0 sequence is called maximal length
 Normalized Autocorrelation of PN Sequences
𝑇
𝑅 𝜏 = න 𝑥 𝑡 𝑥 𝑡 + 𝜏 𝑑𝑡
R=1.0
τ=0.0 0
R=0.79
τ=0.2
τ=0.4 R=0.57
normalized circular autocorrelation
τ=0.6 R=0.36
R(τ)/max(R(τ))
R=0.15
1
R=-0.07
R=-0.07 τ
R=-0.07 -0.07 1 15

…
R=-0.07
R=0.15
R=0.36
R=0.57
…
R=0.79
R=-0.07
…
 Normalized Autocorrelation of PN Sequences

Perfect correlation here

Any cyclic shift greater than 1 results in -1/p

value for normalized autocorrelation function

This is the autocorrelation of the sequence 000100110101111.

So, this sequence satisfies desired correlation property.
 Another Example Used in GPS

SSRG[10,3]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

C/A code

SSRG[10,9,8,6,3,2]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
 1023 bits

(Make ±1 binary antipodal signal)

plot(abs(fft(O)).^2/1024);
O=2*(seq.signals.values-0.5);

plot(abs(ifft(abs(fft(O)).^2))/1024);

Autocorrelation (via FFT) power spectrum

full correlation at  =0 (truncated here) (Doesn’t look like ps of white noise! What is wrong? Hmw)
 BPSK with DSSS

carrier x(t ) cos(ot ) x(t ) g (t ) cos(o t )

cos( o t ) BPSK modulator code modulator

PN sequence
binary antipodal data
binary 1 => 1 x(t ) C
g (t )
binary 0 => -1 H
bit A
N
N
E
chip g (t  Td ) L

xˆ (t  Td ) BPSK demodulator BPF X

 Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)

Each symbol (with r bits) is represented by one of M different frequencies

M-ary FSK

M  2r or r  log 2 M

Example Binary FSK r 1 M  2

0 1 0 0 1 1 0
data M-ary FSK
X FH/MFSK
modulator
BPF

carrier(s) Freq. generates K different carriers in the

synthesizer operating band for K hopping frequencies

PN code PN code
generator same
generator
Channel

Freq.
synthesizer

data
M-ary FSK
X
demodulator
BPF-2
 Example Consider an 8-ary FSK communication system.
Apply FHSS with 8=23 hopping channels within 2.4-2.48 GHz ISM band.

symbols 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111

8-ary FSK
fo

f (MHz)

2405 2415 2425 2435 2445 2455 2465 2475

dwell time (<400 μs)

f

2475
2465
2455
2445
2435
2425
2415
2405
t
010100110111000011101100010000110010101011110101010001111
Example binary stream
Q: Assume 2 khops/sec. What is the bit rate?
 Dwell Time

chip duration dwell time

tc td
The receiver must be synchronized after each hop

f1 f2
bit duration
 CDMA with FHSS

frequency

available frequency bands

SN Sj Sk

0<İ,j,k,l,m,n≤N

S2 Si Sm

S1 Sn Sl

time

time slots
 Bluetooth

2.4 - 2.4835 GHz ISM band is divided into 79 channels (1 MHz each plus some guarding)

Industrial, Scientific, Medical

Channel is changed 1600 times per second (hop frequency)

ver-1.1 723.1 kbit/s (1 Mbit/s)

ver-1.2
ver-2.1 2.1 Mbit/s (3 Mbit/s)

Dwell time is 625 s.

802.11 (wireless network) also operates in 2.4 GHz band.

They interfere with each other.

Bluejacking: Sending of unsolicited messages over Bluetooth to Bluetooth-enabled devices

Bluesnarfing: Unauthorized access through a Bluetooth connection
 Several sub-bands with QAM on each
throughput rate Also used in ADSL, DVB-T, powerline
802.11a 1999 5 GHz 23 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s OFDM
802.11b 1999 2.4 GHz 4.3 Mbit/s 11 Mbit/s DSSS also cordless phones, GPS
802.11g 2003 2.4 GHz 19 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s OFDM
802.11n 2008 2.4, 5 GHz 74 Mbit/s 248 Mbit/s MIMO-OFDM DBPSK (1 Mbit/s)
DQPSK (2 Mbit/s)
802.11y 2008 3.7 GHz 23 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s OFDM
…
802.11ax 2019 2.4-6 GHz 160 Mbit/s 9608 Mbit/s MIMO-OFDM
 END
(to be continued)