Fundamentals of Spread Spectrum Modulation

This lecture covers the fundamentals of spread spectrum modulation, which can be defined as any modulation technique that requires a transmission bandwidth much greater than the modulating signal bandwidth, independently of the bandwidth of the modulating signal. After reviewing basic digital modulation techniques, the principal forms of spread spectrum modulation are described. One of the most important components of a spread spectrum system is the spreading code, and several types and their characteristics are described. The most essential operation required at the receiver in a spread spectrum system is the code synchronization, which is usually broken down into the operations of acquisition and tracking. Means for performing these operations are discussed next. Finally, the performance of spread spectrum systems is of fundamental interest and the effect of jamming is considered, both without and with the use of forward error correction coding. The presentation ends with consideration of spread spectrum systems in the presence of other users. For more complete treatments of spread spectrum, the reader is referred to [1, 2, 3].

Rodger E. Ziemer received the BSEE, MSEE, and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota in 1960, 1962, and 1965, respectively. After serving in the U.S. Air Force from 1965 to 1968, he joined the University of Missouri–Rolla in 1968 where he stayed until 1983, having been promoted through the ranks to Professor. He joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) in January 1984 where he was Professor and Chairman of ECE until 1993 and then Professor from September 1993 till now. In August 1998, he went on leave to the National Science Foundation where he served as Program Director for Communications Research until August 2001, and then returned to UCCS. He has spent intermittent periods on leave or sabbatical to various universities and industrial concerns, including Motorola Government Electronics Group in 1980–81 and in 1991, Motorola Corporate Research Laboratories in the summer of 1995, Motorola Cellular Infrastructure Group Applied Research Laboratories in the summer of 1997, University of California at San Diego in February 1998, and Virginia Technical and State University in June 1998. He was also a Visiting Professor, Iasi Polytechnic Institute, Iasi, Romania, May–June 1993, and again in May–June 1996, from which he received a Doctorate Honoris Causa. He has published several papers in his areas of research interest, principally in digital communications. He has authored and co-authored several books, including Introduction to Digital Communications (2nd ed.), Prentice Hall, 2001 (with R. L. Peterson), Signals and Systems: Continuous and Discrete (4th ed.), Prentice Hall, 1998 (with W. H. Tranter and D. R. Fannin), Principles of Communications: Systems, Modulation, and Noise (5th ed.), John Wiley & Sons, 2002 (with W. H. Tranter), Introduction to Spread Spectrum Communications, Prentice Hall, 1995 (with R. L. Peterson and D. Borth), and Introduction to EngineeringProbability and Statistics, Prentice Hall, 1997.