Time-hopping and frequency-hopping multiple-access packet communications

Time-hopping and frequency-hopping multiple-access (TH/FHMA) packet communication systems are proposed and investigated. In TH/FHMA communication systems, a message packet is encoded into several subpackets via a Reed-Solomon error correcting code. The subpackets are transmitted over the channel using time-hopping and frequency-hopping patterns. It is assumed that the channel is noiseless and the side information is perfect so that all subpacket collisions can be correctly detected. Slot-synchronous and totally asynchronous TH/FHMA systems are analyzed in detail, and they are shown to have excellent throughputs at small packet erasure rates. Various time-hopping techniques which significantly reduce the multiple-access interference are developed