Co-Channel Interference of Spread Spectrum Systems in a Multiple User Environment

This paper considers the mutual interference problem of several users employing the same spread spectrum technique in selected multiple user environments. The spread spectrum techniques consist of pseudo noise (PN), time division multiple access/PN, synchronous and asynchronous frequency hopping (FH). The environment consists of a desired transmitter-receiver pair located in an area where there are interfering users distributed in accordance with a specified probability density function. Both coherent phase-shift-keyed-and noncoherent frequency-shift-keyed modulations are considered. The general relationship between the probability of bit error of PN and FH systems is derived which is independent of the signal modulation and distribution of users. The degradation of the communication system performance (average probability of bit error) of the desired link as a function of the total number of interfering users within the considered area is investigated. The analysis shows that the mutual interference problem is less severe with users employing synchronous FH than with the other spread spectrum techniques. The comparison between asynchronous FH and PN is highly dependent on the relative location of interferers to the desired link and the time duty factor of the hopping.