The present invention relates to spread spectrum communications, and in particular, to methods and receiver despreader architectures for despreading spread spectrum signals.
Spread spectrum communications system spread information over bandwidths much larger than those actually required to transmit the information. The spread spectrum technologies have been widely used both in military and commercial wireless communication systems such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), IS2000 mobile communications systems, and applications based on the emerging IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The advantages of using the spread spectrum approach are many. Spread spectrum systems are very robust with respect to noise and interferences due to the spreading gain. These systems are also inherently secure where multi-path fading has a lesser impact.
In the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, the transmitted data stream are grouped into 4 bits as a symbol and mapped and spreaded, i.e., encoded into 16 ary Psuedo Noise (PN) spreading codes where each of the 16 possible symbols is represented by a 32 bit PN code. Table 1 shows the 16 spreading PN codes defined by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard (“original PN codes”) where Symbol 0 through Symbol 15 is mapped into Codes 1 through 16. Each code is 32-bit long and represents 4 binary digits. The codes are designed to have the following properties: (1) Codes 2 to 8 are obtained by cyclicly shifting right 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28 bits of the first code (symbol 0); and (2) Codes 9 to 16 are the inversion of odd-indexed chip value of codes 1 to 8.
In order to utilize the full potential of spread spectrum systems, spreading codes such as the original PN codes are constructed to have good auto- and cross-correlation properties. That is, with correlation during despreading, one code can effectively differentiate itself from the other codes under noisy conditions.
The spreaded PN codes are modulated using minimum shift keying (MSK) modulation schemes before transmission. MSK modulations schemes have many robust features and have been adopted in standards such as GSM, Bluetooth, and DECT.
A spreaded spectrum receiver has to demodulate and then despread the received signal with spreading codes. A typical implementation of these processes is shown in
The receiver demodulation of MSK modulated signals can be either coherent or non-coherent demodulation. However, the receiver architecture of coherent demodulation is more complex and is more expensive to implement. In addition to data path match filtering, despreading and demapping, the coherent receiver requires carrier recovery and timing recovery circuits to determine the phase and frequency of carrier and timing clock in order to successfully recover the data stream. Therefore, coherent demodulation scheme of MSK signals are seldom adopted in industry due to the high cost in implementation.
The use of differential demodulation, a non-coherent demodulation, as the MSK demodulation scheme eliminates the necessity of carrier recovery circuits. Differential demodulation converts carrier frequency offset into DC offset thus requiring only DC removal circuits that are much simpler than carrier recovery circuits.
However, the unique properties of original PN codes are lost and changed after differential demodulation. The differential demodulated signals will require a new set of differential encoded PN codes for despreading with the use multiple correlators.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/712,643 provides a novel receiver transformer that transforms the received demodulated signal. It also transforms the original PN sequence into a transformed differential encoded PN codes (“Differential Encoded PN Codes”) as shown in Table 2 for subsequent processing of the transformed received signal. With special setting on the initial condition of the differential encoded PN sequence, this Differential Encoded PN Codes have better properties than the original PN codes. The new codes have the following superior properties: (1) Code 2 (symbol 1) to Code 8 (symbol 7) are obtained by cyclicly shifting right 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28 bits of the first code (symbol 0); and (2) Codes 9 (Symbol 8) to Codes 16 (Symbol 15) are the inversion of Codes 1 to 8. These new, superior properties allow a simple despeader/demapper implementation.
However, the despreading of Table 2 differential encoded PN codes is customarily accomplished using 16 correlators, one for each code of the differential encoded PN codes. Each received code of a demodulated transformed received signal has to be correlated with the 16 correlators to determine the maximum value of the correlation in order to determine the corresponding symbol for that received code. The hardware implementation of this method of despreading is very expensive and has to occupy a lot of ASIC area. In addition, this method of despreading requires the use of timing recovery circuits to address the timing shift caused by the sampling clock mismatch between the transmitter and the receiver.
Therefore, it is desirable to have innovative methods for despreading spread spectrum signals to overcome the shortcoming of prior art technologies.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide simple methods for despreading of spread spectrum signals.
It is another object of the present invention to provide methods for generating correlation codes such that only one correlator is required for the despreading of spread spectrum signals.
It is another object of the present invention to provide methods for despreading spread spectrum that is robust to timing frequency shifts generated between the transmitter and receiver clocks.
This invention provides novel methods for the despreading and demapping of demodulated signals, transformed and mapped into a set of Differential Encoded PN Codes, into its original symbols by the use of a single correlation code. Novel single correlation codes are generated from one of the symbols that has been mapped into the Differential Encoded PN Codes. Each received code of a received spreaded signal is correlated with said generated single correlation code to obtain despreading output samples of the despreading output. The index for the maximum positive or negative peak of the despreading output samples is identified, and then mapped into a symbol corresponding to the transmitted information.
This invention also provides novel receiver despreader architecture for each code of despreading received spreaded signals comprising of shift registers with taps attached to the inputs of said shift registers. Received samples of each received spreaded code are inputted into the shift registers. An embodiment of the receiver despreader architecture operates to calculate the despreading output samples of the despreading output by accumulating the products of the multiplication of the input to the shift registers with predetermined values associated with the taps. The predetermined value associated with a tap corresponds to the value of the correlation samples of the generated correlated codes. The despreading output index for the maximum of the absolute values of the despreading output samples is identified and then mapped into a symbol corresponding to the transmitted signal.
An advantage of the present invention is that it provides simple methods for despreading of spread spectrum signals.
Another advantage of the present invention is that it provides methods for generating correlation codes such that only one correlator is required for the despreading of spread spectrum signals.
Another advantage of the present invention is that it eliminates the need for timing recovery circuits to track sampling clock frequency mismatches between the transmitter and receiver.
The foregoing and other objects, aspects and advantages of the invention will be better understood from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments of this invention when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
This invention provides innovative methods and receiver architectures for the despreading and demapping the codes of demodulated signals into its original symbols by the use of a single correlation code. These demodulated signals have been transformed and mapped into a set of a set of differential encoded PN codes before the despreading process. Methods for generating these single correlation codes are developed by exploiting the unique functional inter-relationships between the different codes in the set of differential encoded PN codes. These methods of despreading also eliminate the necessity of timing recovery circuits and the use of multipliers at the same time.
After demodulation, a received signal contains codes to be despreaded for symbol decision-making. Each received spreaded code rx is series of received samples rx(k) where rx(k) denotes the kth received sample of the received code that is being despreaded and k is the received index of said received sample.
The initial clock timing and PN code phase are acquired during signal detection of preambles such that the despreader know where to start despreading the incoming received signals. The method for despreading a received code involves the use of a single correlation code and comprises of the following steps:
generating a despreading output as a function of said received spreaded code and said single correlation code;
identifying the despreading output index of the maximum of the absolute value of said despreading output, kmax; and
mapping kmax into a symbol of a set of symbols corresponding to the transmitted signal.
The following embodiment illustrates the method and despreader architecture for the despreading of 64-sample received codes corresponding to a transmitted signal whose symbols have been spreaded and mapped into the Differential Encoded PN Codes of Table 2.
The Generation of A Correlation Code
The first step in this despreading is to generate a correlation code by utilizing the functional relationships between the codes in the set of differential encoded PN codes Once this single correlation code is generated, it is used for the despreading of all received spreaded codes. The following preferred embodiment generates a correlation code, C128, for a received spreaded code having 64 received samples that have been spreaded and mapped into the Differential Encoded PN Codes of Table 2. It can be generated by using Symbol 0 corresponding to Code 1. For received spreaded codes that has been transformed and mapped into the 16 ary Differential PN Codes, correlation codes corresponding to the other 15 codes can be similarly constructed. However, only one correlation code needs to be generated since only one is needed for the despreading.
Here, C128 has 128 samples. It is generated by Symbol 0 of Table 2 that has been upsampled twice, repeated, and shifted by 4 samples and mapped. If the 32 bits of Symbol 0 is denoted by [d0. d1, d2, d3, . . . d29, d30, d31], the correlation code with 128 samples is generated as follows:
(1) Symbol 0 is mapped into a 32 sample code denoted by: [c0, c1, c2, . . . c29, c30, c31] where ci=di=1 when di=1, and ci=−1, when di=0 where ci is the ith sample of the mapped function and di denotes the ith bit in Symbol 0;
(2) This mapped function is upsampled by inserting zeroes after each ci to form a 64 sample code denoted by [c0, 0, c1, 0, c2, 0, . . . c29, 0, c30, 0, c31, 0];
(3) The above code is repeated to form a 128 sample code denoted by: [c0, 0, c1, 0, c2, 0, . . . c29, 0, c30, 0, c31, 0, c0, 0, c1, 0, c2, 0. . . c29, 0, c30, 0, c310];
(4) The last 4 samples of this 128 sample code is then cyclicly shifted right to become the first 4 correlation code samples of the correlation code C128 having 128 correlation code samples represented by:
C128=[c30, 0, c31, 0, c0, 0, c1, 0, c2, 0, . . . c29, 0, c300, c31, 0, c0, 0, c1, 0, c2, 0, . . . c29, 0]
For the correlation code generated with Symbol 0,
Generation of Despreading Output by Multiplying and Accumulating the Received Spreaded Code with the Correlation Code
One method to calculate the despreading outputs of a received code is by accumulating the multiplication of the correlation codes samples of the correlation code with the received samples of the received code. In the embodiment where the received code has 64 received samples and rx(n) is the nth sample of the received signal where 1≦n≦64, one method to calculate rc(k), the kth sample of the 64 sample despreading output, also called the correlation output, is to accumulate the multiplied products of the received code with the correlation code C128. That is, the (n+k)th correlation code sample of the correlation code, C128(n+k), is multiplied by the nth received sample of the received code, rx(n), for each of the 64 received samples of the received code and the products of the multiplication for all 64 samples are accumulated to become rc(k). This process can be represented mathematically as follows:
Identifying kmax, the Despreading Output Index of the Maximum of the Absolute Value of said Despreading Output
The 64 samples of the despreading output, rc(k), for each k between 1 and 64 can be calculated using Equation (1) for 1≦k≦64. The maximum of the absolute value of the despreading output, i.e., the positive peak or the negative peak of the despreading output can be found. This maximum despreading output identifies the despreading ouput index kmax corresponding to the either the positive or negative peak of the despreading output samples, rc(k). Mathematically kmax is defined by the following equation.
Symbol Decision Making by Mapping kmax into a Symbol in a Set of Symbols Corresponding to the Transmitted Information
Once kmax, is identified, it can be used to map the received code to the original symbols, i.e., the original symbols of the transmitted signal in a set of symbols that have been mapped into said set of Differential Encoded PN codes. The despreading outputs have 64 despreading output samples and each 8 despreading output samples of the despreading output can be mapped to one symbol. Since, the PN codes contain 16 symbols to despread, the unique feature of these differential encoded spreading codes is needed to identify the received output for the symbols 8 through 15. In the differential encoded PN codes, the first 8 codes are exactly the inverse of the last 8 codes. If a code among the last 8 symbols is received, the received output rc(k) will be a negative peak. Therefore, positive peaks in the despreading outputs map to first 8 symbols while the negative peaks map to last 8 symbols. In other words, if rc(kmax)>0, when 1≦kmax≦8, the received spreaded code is despreaded and mapped into Symbol 0. When 9≦kmax≦16, the received spreaded code is despreaded and mapped into Symbol 1, and so on. If rc(kmax)<0, when 1≦kmax≦8, the received spreaded code is despreaded and mapped into Symbol 8, when 9≦kmax≦16, the received spreaded code is despreaded and mapped into Symbol 9, and so on. Ideally, for perfect received code with no frequency mismatch, kmax, the despreading output indexes of the maximum of the absolute value of the despreading output samples are at 5, 13, 21, 29, 37, 45, 53, and 61. They correspond to the symbols 0, 1, 2, 7 if rc(kmax)>0 and correspond to symbols 8, 9, . . . 15 when rc(kmax)<0 With timing frequency offset, the peaks of the despreading outputs will move from those perfect positions because the sampling phase offset.
Another method to map the symbol corresponding to the received code is to compute an index m with the following equation:
Index “m” denotes the corresponding number of the symbol that has been mapped into the PN codes. In other words, for rc(kmax)>0, and 1≦kmax≦8, then m=0 and the code received corresponds to Symbol 0. Similarly, m corresponds to the Symbol m for 1+8* m≦kmax≦8*(m+1) for rc(kmax)>0.
The above-described methodology can similarly be used to despread multiple codes in the received signal. Thus, if rx(n,l) denotes the nth sample of the lth code of the received codes, and rc(k,l) denotes the kth sample of the despreading output samples for the for the lth code, then the following equations defines kmax, l, the despreading output index for the lth code, and m (l), the index for the lth code corresponding to the number of the symbol for the lth code as listed in the Table 2.
Examples of despreading outputs obtained by the method in this embodiment is illustrated in
The noise floor for this example is high as the signal to noise ratio, SNR, is 8 dB. However, even with this high SNR, and the maximum values of the despreading output, rc(kmax, l) is not far from other spreading output rc(k, l) where k≠kmax, the symbol decision making can be accomplished correctly after despreading, as long is the maximum still occurs with the 8 sample window of kmax.
Despreader Architecture
With the superior properties of the new code set, the demapping algorithm is very easy to implement in hardware and is described in Equations 3 and 3a. In other embodiments where the alternate samples of the correlation code is not zero, taps can be inserted at the inputs of every shift register of the above-described despreader architecture so that the multiplication process is performed at all registers instead of every other register.
Symbol Timing Track
Sampling clock mismatch can reach as high as +/−40 ppm as allowed by the original PN codes. Therefore, if a transmitter has a +40 ppm sampling clock frequency error and a receiver has a −40 ppm sampling clock error, the total frequency error is 80 ppm. This sampling clock frequency mismatch between the transmitter and the receiver causes the sampling phases of the received signals to continually change, and, at times, some samples are dropped or repeated. As a result, at the receiver side, some mechanism has to be built to compensate and track the timing phase changes. In some applications, it is possible to remove the frequency error before despreading by using closed loop timing recovery circuits. However, the designs of these closed loop recovery circuits are difficult. They are power sensitive and require a lot of fine tuning making them expensive for many applications.
Embodiments of this invention do not require the use of closed loops since their inherent properties build in tolerances to sampling clock mismatch. Therefore, hardware implementation of this despreading method is much easier and cheaper. In generating the despreading correlation code from Symbol 0 of the differential encoded PN code, the last 4 samples of the correlation code is cyclicly shifted right such that, when there the incoming signals are perfect and there is no noise, the despreading output indexes for the 16 symbols start at 5 and are separated by 8. That is, for perfect incoming signals, the despreading output indexes are at 5, 13, 21, 29, 37, 45, 53, 61, 69, 77, 85, 93, 101, 109,117, and 125. The perfect symbol position for Symbol 0 is adjusted to occur at 5 to take into account that the timing drift can occur in both directions. With timing frequency offset, the peaks of the despreading outputs will move from those perfect positions because of the sampling phase offset. However, for short burst, these peaks do not move much with limited timing frequency offset.
For example, with the maximum timing frequency offset of 80 ppm in this embodiment with the longest burst of 127 bytes payload, the number of samples that can be moved with changes in the sampling phase is calculated to be:
80e−6*(1064/4*32*2)=1.3619 samples
where 80e−6 is the PPM value; 1064, i.e., (127*8+32+8+8), is the number of bits transmitted; the factor 4 accounts for the bits to symbol conversion; the factor 32 accounts for the spreading ratio; and the factor 2 is the up-sampling rate during despreading for the chips.
The outputs of the despreading output indexes are shown in
While the present invention has been described with reference to certain preferred embodiments, it is to be understood that the present invention is not limited to such specific embodiments. Rather, it is the inventor's contention that the invention be understood and construed in its broadest meaning as reflected by the following claims. Thus, these claims are to be understood as incorporating not only the preferred embodiments described herein but also all those other and further alterations and modifications as would be apparent to those of ordinary skilled in the art.
This application is a continuation-in-part of the United States patent application entitled “Receiver Based Method for DeSpreading of Spread Spectrum Signal,” filed on Nov. 13, 2003, having a U.S. application Ser. No. 10/712,643.
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
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6351462 | Komatsu | Feb 2002 | B1 |
6601078 | Bondarowicz et al. | Jul 2003 | B1 |
7076015 | Bhatoolaul et al. | Jul 2006 | B2 |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20050105597 A1 | May 2005 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 10712643 | Nov 2003 | US |
Child | 10876160 | US |