An experimental testbed for a direct sequence spread spectrum local area network

Describes the production of an experimental testbed for the evaluation of a spread spectrum local area network (SS-LAN). The SS-LAN employs a direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) modulation technique for the realisation of the channel multiple access scheme. The testbed consists of two models: a software simulation and a hardware prototype. The hardware prototype is a real network and as such encapsulates many of the problems featured in SS systems, in particular the near-far effect. Initial evaluations of the two models have found them to be in close agreement. The results have shown that maximally connected maximal length pseudorandom codes and Gold codes produce similar bit error rate performances but that Gold codes have an observed lower correlation parameter