Performance of Reed-Solomon Coded Frequency-Hop Spread-Spectrum Communications in Partial-Band Interference

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the performance of a Commun- ications system which utilizes frequency-hop spread spectrum, diversity transmission, Reed-Solomon coding, and parallel error-correction and erasure-correction decoding. Both binary signaling and M-ary orthogonal signaling are considered. The goals are twofold. First, it is desirable to provide good performance in partial-band Gaussian noise interference by use of coding and diversity with an efficient error-correction algorithm. Second, it is necessary to totally neutralize narrow-band interference (regardless of the power level or statistical distribution ofthe interference) in order to have an effective spread-spectrum system. Through an analysis of the effects of partial-band interference on a frequency-hap spread-spectrum system with divetsity, it is shown that the use Of Reed- Solomon coding with a parallel errors and erasures aecoding algorithm accomplishes these goals. The paper also investigates the accuracy of the Chernoff bound as an approximation to the true performance of a frequency-hop spread- spectrum communication system with diversity; side information, Mary orthogonal signaling, and Reed-Solomon coding. fhe performance results presented in the paper are based on analysis and computer evaluation. Approximate results based on the Chernoff bound are also given. It is shown that the Chernoff bound for Mary orthogonal signaling gives a very poor approximation for many cases of interest. This is largely due to the looseness of the union bound.