Experimental Comparison of FB-MC-SS and DS-SS in HF Channels
Stephen Andrew Laraway, José Loera, Hussein Moradi, Behrouz Farhang‐Boroujeny · 2018
This paper presents a comparison of direct sequence spread spectrum (DS-SS) and filter bank multi carrier spread spectrum (FB-MC-SS) systems when applied for communications over HF channels. Such systems by their spread spectrum nature are, clearly, broadband. On the other hand, noting that the presence of narrowband interferers are inevitable in HF channels, interference suppression performance has to be given a special consideration when such systems are designed. In this paper DSSS and FB-MC-SS are compared using measured HF interference data. FB-MC-SS is shown to have very good performance while using a low complexity and robust maximum ratio combining receiver. The partitioned structure of the FB-MC-SS waveform enables this implementation. Among the DS-SS receivers in the literature, we find that only the highly complex minimum mean square error (MMSE) receiver can provide a comparable performance to its FB-MC-SS counterpart. Considering the receiver complexity, it becomes obvious that FB-MC-SS is the right choice for further developments of HF spread spectrum modems in the future.