Wide-band packet radio technology

Advances in signal processing and architectural design for high-performance packet radio are described. The scope of the work roughly encompasses the data-link and physical levels of standardized layered-network architectures. A hardware-function layering approach is used, including the purposeful design of an interface to provide a structured control environment for a demonstration packet radio. The advanced signal processing provides a robust, flexible data link to service demanding network environments, and uses 100-MHz-bandwidth surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) convolvers as large time-bandwidth product matched filters for communication with nonrepeating pseudonoise waveforms. The convolvers are combined with a binary-quantized postprocessor to implement a hybrid correlator which provides high processing gain for detection, demodulation, and ranging measurements. Data rates can be selected, in response to varying channel conditions, over a range from 1.45 Mbits/s down to 44 bits/s with an almost ideal tradeoff in processing gain for interference rejection and privacy ranging from 18 dB up to 61 dB. Future enhancements are proposed that will advance both the signal processing and the architecture.