Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

Monsoon semester 2021

Topic: Direct-Sequence Spread-Spectrum Systems

Vinay Joseph

NIT Calicut

October 12, 2021

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Where are we in this course?

Module 1
▶ High level analysis of wireless communication networks using a
simplified model of wireless channel
▶ Careful modeling of a wireless channel
Module 2
▶ Point-to-point communication in wireless fading channel
Module 3
▶ Analysis of some wideband wireless communication and systems using
more detailed wireless channel model
⋆ Direct-sequence spread-spectrum communication and system
⋆ OFDM communication and system
▶ Main reference [1]: Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Appendix A,
Fundamentals of Wireless Communication, Tse et al
⋆ Available at
https://web.stanford.edu/~dntse/wireless_book.html

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Narrowband vs wideband systems

Wireless systems can be broadly classified into

▶ Narrowband systems
▶ Wideband systems

Narrowband systems: user transmits using narrowband channels

▶ Narrowband channel’s bandwidth is smaller than channel coherence
bandwidth
▶ Narrowband channels can often be ”decoupled” using interferene
management (e.g., orthogonal resources per channel)
▶ Narrowband system thus can be analyzed by separate analysis of
individual channels
▶ Example: GSM (a 2G technology) uses this

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Wideband systems: Introduction

In wideband channels, user transmissions can span entire bandwidth

We focus on wideband systems in this module

▶ Wideband channels cannot be easily ”decoupled” since entire
bandwidth can be used by any users
▶ A system level view (in addition to channel-level view or link-level view)
is often useful for wideband systems

Examples
▶ Direct-sequence spread-spectrum systems
⋆ IS-95 (a 2G technology) uses CDMA which is based on direct-sequence
spread-spectrum
▶ Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based systems
⋆ 4G/LTE and 5G/NR use OFDM

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Wideband channel: Model

Wideband channel tends to

▶ be frequency-selective since transmission bandwidth is typically more
than channel coherence bandwidth
▶ have large delay spread compared to symbol duration

Wideband channel can be modeled using finite number L of taps:

L−1
X
y [m] = hl [m]x[m − l] + w [m]
l=0

▶ There is Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI)

▶ We saw a simple approach sending just one information symbol every L
slots. But, its data rate is low.
▶ Detection in wideband channel has to address ISI (directly or indirectly)

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Wideband systems: Detection approaches
PL−1
Wideband channel model: y [m] = l=0 hl [m]x[m − l] + w [m]

Three detection approaches for wideband channels

▶ Single-carrier systems with equalization
⋆ Single carrier is used with equalization (extracting transmitted symbols
from received signal with ISI) at receiver
⋆ Non-linear equalizers like ML based Viterbi algorithm perform well
though have high-complexity
⋆ Lower complexity linear equalizers (sub-optimal) can also be used

▶ Multi-carrier systems
⋆ Using (precoding) operations at transmitter, wideband ISI channel is
converted into orthogonal narrowband ”sub-carriers”
⋆ Frequency diversity achievable using sufficiently apart sub-carriers
⋆ Example: OFDM (considered in next lecture)

▶ Direct-sequence spread-spectrum (more on this soon)

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Direct-sequence spread-spectrum: Introduction

Information symbols modulated by a pseudonoise (PN) sequence and

transmitted over bandwidth W much larger than data rate R

How is ISI tackled? Because of low data rate, ISI is small across
(long) PN sequences

Downside: low rate for any one user

▶ Example: For IS-95 (CDMA), bandwidth is 1.2288MHz and a typical
data rate is just 9.6 kbits/s.

Then why use it? Multiple users can share a channel with users
appearing like noise to each other.
▶ Since ISI is low, simple receiver possible without needing equalization

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Direct-sequence spread-spectrum: Plan for this lecture

Using direct-sequence spread-spectrum communication for a

wideband channel:

▶ Understand how transmission works and role of PN sequence

▶ How to perform detection?

⋆ We see how ”Rake Receiver” can be used for detection.

▶ What performance do we get?

⋆ We see that we can get diversity gain of L

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Direct-sequence spread-spectrum: Setting

Consider frequency selective channel with finite number L of taps:

L−1
X
y [m] = hl [m]x[m − l] + w [m]
l=0

▶ Assume hl [m] ∼ CN (0, 1/L) (i.e., equal energy per tap).

▶ Usually, there is more energy in taps associated with shorter delays

Binary information symbol is transmitted by transmitting one of two

n-chips long PN sequences xA or xB
▶ Shifted versions of a PN sequence are almost orthogonal (more precise
definition soon)
▶ One bit is sent every n/W seconds (chip duration ≈ 1/W ). So,
n = W /R
▶ W /R is also called processing gain

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Direct-sequence spread-spectrum: Setting

Assume hl [m] does not vary with m during transmission of PN

sequence (i.e., over n chips’ duration)
▶ That is, Wn << Coherence-time
▶ So, we can consider following model:
L−1
X
y [m] = hl x[m − l] + w [m]
l=0

n
We also assume that W >> delay-spread, so that there is no
significant ISI across PN sequences
▶ Can thus focus on detection of one PN sequence at a time

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Direct-sequence spread-spectrum: Transmission
We focus on antipodal signaling case: x A = u , x B = −u , where u is
a PN sequence
Notation
▶ u is n dimensional vector u = [u[1], ..., u[n]]

▶ u (l) is n + l dimensional vector obtained by shifting u by appending l

zeros before u and appending L − l zeros after u

⋆ i.e., u (l) = [0, ..., 0, u[1], ..., u[n], 0, ..., 0]
Channel model can be rewritten considering one PN sequence at a
time as
L−1
y= hl x (l) + w
X

l=0

where x (l) is either u (l) or −u (l) depending on whether x A or x B is

sent respectively

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Direct-sequence spread-spectrum: PN sequence property

Use of PN sequence is a distinguishing feature of spread spectrum

systems

Key property of PN sequence: Shifted versions of a PN sequence

are nearly orthogonal to each other. So, if u is a pseudonoise
sequence, then for any l = 0, ..., L − 1
 ∗   n
(l ′ )
u u
X
(l)
<< |u[i]|2 , l ̸= l ′
i=1

Note that
 ∗  ′

u (l) u (l ) = ∥u ∥2 , l = l ′

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 How to detect at receiver? Exploit PN sequences property
Channel model: y = L−1 l=0 hl x
(l) + w , x (l) is either u (l) or −u (l)
P

Consider following sufficient statistics for each l = 0, ..., L − 1:

∗
∗ L−1
u (l) u (l)
!
(l ′ )
y= hl ′ x + w
X
(l)
r =
∥u ∥ ∥u ∥ ′
l =0

∗ (l ′ )
∗
L−1
X u (l) x u (l) w
= hl ′ +
′
∥u ∥ ∥u ∥
l =0

u is pseudonoise sequence, i.e.,

 ∗   n
(l ′ )
u u
X
(l)
<< |u[i]|2 , l ̸= l ′
i=1
 ∗  
(l ′ )
u (l)
u = ∥u ∥2 , l = l ′

Hence, r (l) = hl x + w (l) , l = 0, ..., L − 1, where x ± ∥u ∥

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 How to detect at receiver? End with an MRC
Following is reminiscent of channel model with repetition coding:

r (l) = hl x + w (l) , l = 0, ..., L − 1, where x ± ∥u ∥

=⇒ r = h x + w , where x ± ∥u ∥

▶ Note that |x| = ∥u ∥ ∝ n = Processing-gain

⋆ This justifies use of the phrase ”processing gain”
▶ Note that w (l) ∼ CN (0, N0 ) for each l = 0, ..., L − 1, since
(l) ∗
u w


w (l) =
∥u ∥
Like in repetition coding, MRC operation can be used to decide
whether x is ∥u ∥ or −∥u ∥:
 ∗  x=∥u ∥
h
R r ≥ 0
∥h ∥ <
x=−∥u ∥

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Rake receiver
Receiver also called Rake receiver performs following operations using
received signal y and using knowledge of (estimate of) h
(u (l) )
∗
(i) Compute r (l) = ∥u ∥ y , for each l = 0, ..., L − 1
(ii) Compute R ∥hh ∥ r
n ∗ o

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Rake receiver: Performance

Using analysis similar to repetition coding with MRC, we have

 s 
2∥ h ∥2
∥ u ∥2
pe = E [P {error|h }] = E Q  
N0
" !#
∥h ∥2 ∥u ∥2
≤ E exp −
N0
1
≤
1 + ∥Nu0∥L
2
L

▶ Last step uses a variation of analysis of repetition coding with MRC to

account for variance 1/L of hl [m] ∼ CN (0, 1/L)

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Rake receiver: Diversity gain

Probability of error upper bound with Rake receiver:

1
pe ≤ 
1 + ∥Nu0∥L
2
L

Rake receiver provides diversity gain of L

However ∥Nu0∥L decreases with L and this can be attributed to splitting
2

of energy across L taps

▶ Thus, decay of pe with L is slower

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 DSSS communication for wideband channel: Summary
DSSS communication can be used in wideband systems
Transmission uses PN sequence:
L−1
y= hl x (l) + w
X

l=0

where x (l) is either u (l) or −u (l) , where u is a PN sequence

Detection uses Rake receiver:
(u (l) )
∗
i) Compute r (l) = ∥u ∥ y , for each l = 0, ..., L − 1
ii) Detection rule
 ∗  x=∥u ∥
h
R r ≥ 0
∥h ∥ <
x=−∥u ∥

1
Rake receiver provides diversity gain of L: pe ≤  L
∥u ∥2
1+ N L
0

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication

 Reference

[1] Tse, D., Viswanath, P. (2005). Fundamentals of Wireless

Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Vinay Joseph (NIT Calicut) Lecture 15 Wireless Communication