EMP Effects on the Performance of a Direct Sequence Spread-Spectrum Communication System

This paper presents an analysis of the performance of a direct sequence spread-spectrum communication (processor) system operating in a nuclear EMP environment. EMP-induced interference (conducted EMP) at the receiver is modeled by a damped sinusoid and the analysis of the system uses a frequency domain approach instead of the conventional time domain approach. However, the interference suppression factor derived using the frequency domain approach reduces to that obtained using a time domain approach for the tone jammer case, in which the damping factor in the conducted EMP interference model approaches unity. Using a Gaussian approximation to the interference, numerical results are presented to illustrate the significant EMP-induced interference effects on the system performance and its hardening design parameters.