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PROCESSING-GAIN ADAPTIVE AND MULTIBAND

RADIO FOR HIGH SPEED WIRELESS MOBILE
MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS
Conference Paper June 1997

CITATIONS

7 authors, including:
Greg Behringer
GBIP
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Available from: Greg Behringer

Retrieved on: 27 September 2016

in Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Mobile Multimedia Communications,

Seoul, Korea, 1997.

PROCESSING-GAIN ADAPTIVE AND MULTIBAND RADIO FOR HIGH

SPEED WIRELESS MOBILE MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS
Charles Chien, Vipin Aggarwal, Richard Au, Greg Behringer, Christopher Deng, Iraj Manocheri*, and Bob Sternowski*
* Rockwell International Corporation
Collins Avionics & Communications Division
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
email: rhsterno@cacd.rockwell.com
fax: (319) 295-5742

Integrated Circuits and Systems Laboratory

Department of Electrical Engineering
University of California, Los Angeles
email: chien@janet.ucla.edu
fax: (310) 825-7928

Abstract. Current commercial radio technology lack

two essential capabilities needed for ubiquitous wireless
multimedia communications: 1) high degree of adaptability to maintain quality of service in a highly time-varying
wireless environment with potentially large spurious interference levels encountered in shared bands and 2) high
bit rate over harsh mobile outdoor channel. This paper
presents a multiband processing-gain adaptive radio that
meets the needs for ubiquitous mobile multimedia communications. A 25-2500 MHz multiband technology enables a processing-gain adaptive system that can
frequency-hop over non-contiguous bands to minimize
the effect of interference, especially, those encountered in
shared bands. In conjunction, a modem based on maximum likelihood sequence equalizer enables a bit rate up to
2 Mbps in a mobile outdoor environment with mobility up
to 100 km/hr. and a maximum delay spread of 3 s.

channel with varying interference levels typically encountered in shared bands such as the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz
ISM bands.
In Section 2.0, results in maintaining QoS (sustaining
throughput) using adaptive processing-gain radios in the
presence of varying interference levels will be described.
The results were obtained using a 2 Mchips/sec direct-sequence spread-spectrum radio [3] with an adaptive processing-gain of 12, 15, and 21 dB. The adaptive
processing-gain radio enables sustained throughput with
signal-to-interference (SIR) levels down to -12 dB, whereas an non-adaptive system fails to communicate below -4
dB of SIR. The range of SIR and throughput can be extended further with a high processing-gain radio. In Section 3.0, a multiband RF technology with a bandwidth
extending from 25 MHz to 2500 MHz will be described
which will enable processing gain greater than 21 dB at 2
Mbps by hopping over non-contiguously assigned bands.
This is not possible with current single-band commercial
radios, such as, WaveLAN, Proxim, Plessey, or Harris. To
sustain a 2 Mbps data rate in harsh outdoor environments
poses difficulties due to large delay spreads and doppler
frequencies. This problem is addressed in Section 4.0
which describes a maximum likelihood sequence equalizer (MLSE) modem that allows the multiband frequencyhop radio to sustain a 2 Mbps data rate with an BER of
10 4 in outdoor environments with a maximum delay
spread of 3 micro-second and mobility of 100 km/hr.

1.0 Introduction
Current wireless communications span across a diverse
set of applications including cordless, digital cellular, paging, data over voice, and wireless local area networking.
Though current systems are sufficient in providing low
data rate and voice-based services outdoors, they lack two
essential features needed for the delivery of multimedia
information. First, current systems have little or no support for maintaining quality of service (QoS) for data,
voice, and video [1]. Second, high data rate can only be
achieved in an indoor or benign static outdoor environment. Mobile outdoor operation is still limited to hundreds
of kbps [2], thereby preventing ubiquitous wireless delivery of high quality video and low latency interactive multimedia applications, such as web browsing.
To enable ubiquitous wireless multimedia communications which support not only voice but also data and video,
the deficiencies in maintaining QoS and achieving high bit
rate (multimega bits per second) operation in the outdoor
environment must be overcome. In this paper, we focus on
adaptive radio technologies that will enable (1) 2 Mbps in
the outdoor environment with a delay spread up to 3 microseconds and mobility up to 100 km/hr; and (2) processing-gain adaptation for maintaining QoS in the wireless

2.0 Adaptive Processing-Gain for QoS

QoS is often measured in terms of packet loss, delay,
and delay jitter [4]. In this paper we are mostly interested
in sustaining stable throughput to maintain the QoS in a
mobile wireless environment. This requires the ability to
adapt to the changing environment at all layers of the network architecture [1]. For instance as the channel becomes increasingly worse the application layer will detect
the increasing BER and thereby reduce the video frame
rate and communicate with increased link layer protection. Typically, the additional link protection can be obtained by increasing the amount of forward error
correction. For interference limited environments encoun1

code
select

processing carrier detect

gain

PN
generator

PN
acquisition
loop

power control

TX data

TX

spread
data

LPF

frequency
control
clock
recovery
loop

carrier
recovery
loop

DIGITAL ADAPTIVE DIRECT-SEQUENCE

SPREAD-SPECTRUM MODEM

SIR est.

ADC
decision

VGA

PA

BPF
frequency
synthesizer
LNA

LPF

AGC

sample rate > 2 processing gain bit rate

resolution dynamic range of spurious interference level

recv. data

RF FRONT-END

DIGITAL IF

Figure 1 Adaptive processing-gain direct-sequence spread-spectrum radio.

tered in shared bands, such as the ISM bands, we propose
to use spread-spectrum techniques to provide additional
protection against the spurious interfering sources. To
demonstrate the performance gain possible through processing-gain adaptation, experimental measurements have
been taken from a direct-sequence spread-spectrum radio
[3] that achieves 2 Mchips/sec and 12, 15, and 21 dB processing gain for a data rate of 128 kbps, 64 kbps, and 16
kbps, respectively.
The experimental result is shown in Figure 2 in which
the measured throughput is plotted against the SIR experienced in the channel. The curve for a low processing
gain (PG) of 12 dB is typical of current commercial directsequence radios used for WLAN that conform to the IEEE
802.11 standard [5]. At this low processing gain, the
throughput will have a steep reduction as the SIR increases beyond -4 dB. At the point of transition, both the delay
jitter and throughput become inadequate for any useful
communications. However, with the adaptive processinggain spread-spectrum radio, a stable throughput can still
be maintained (flat regions in Figure 2) at low SIR, down
to -12 dB. For example, as SIR drops below -4 dB the radio adapts to the drop by changing the processing gain
from 12 dB to 15 dB and achieve a stable throughput of 50
kbps. Without this adaptation, the throughput essentially
drops to zero.
Ideally, the sustained throughput should follow a
straight line (Figure 2) as SIR varies for tracking of
throughput to varying SIR. However, the current system
shows steps (Figure 2) in the throughput achieved as the

SIR varies due to coarse adjustment of (12, 15, and 21 dB)

in the processing gain. Note, also that in Figure 2 the
achieved throughput peaks at 128 kbps for the lowest processing gain and 16 kbps for the highest processing gain.
The trade-off in data rate to robustness is characteristic of
spread spectrum whereby the product of processing gain
to data rate must remain a constant which in general
equals the occupied RF bandwidth. To achieve peak
throughput on the order of several megabits/sec needed for
multimedia while sustaining reasonable throughput at low
SIR (-12 dB) for QoS will therefore require significant
amount of bandwidth - hundreds of megahertz. The radio
architecture and technology trade-off to meet this high
bandwidth requirement will be discussed in the next section.
100

Desired

PG = 12 dB

Throughput (kbps)

80

60

PG = 15 dB
Achieved

40

20

0
15

PG = 21 dB
10

Signal-to-Interference Ratio (dB)

Figure 2 Maintaining best possible throughput with
changing SIR levels.

3.0 Multiband Radio for High Processing

Gain and High Bit Rate

amplifier (LNA), (2) the wideband power amplifier (PA)

and (3) the wide tuning range synthesizer. Being wideband these components will necessarily dissipate more
power to meet the specific system requirement, such as,
receiver noise figure (NF). Figure 3 summarizes the power dissipation of the various components and performance
of the RF front-end. The receiver can be designed with a 3
dB NF, less than 500 s tuning settling time, and a 20%
amplifier efficiency at a low total power dissipation of 4.5
W, making this suitable for mobile portable applications.

For direct sequence, the large bandwidth requirement

poses a formidable difficulty because high speed circuits
will be required for the digital modem and the ADC (see
Figure 1). For example, To obtain 2 Mbps with a 21 dB
processing gain, the digital modem must run at 1 GHz,
leading to high power dissipation. Though recent low
power techniques [6] can be employed to mitigate the
power consumption in digital circuits, the power dissipation for a 1 GSps ADC with resolution in excess of 12 bits
will far exceed the power budget required in a portable
handset. For example, a 10-bit 1-GSps ADC can only be
achieved in GaAs technology and dissipates 7 W. Note
that most spread-spectrum system uses 4-6 bits assuming
that only controlled in-system interference need to be accounted for and not spurious interference sources found in
shared bands. In the latter case, high resolution ADC is required to meet the large dynamic range requirement in the
spurious (uncontrolled) interference levels.
Therefore, the high speed processing and high power
dissipation in the ADC make direct sequence less appealing for high processing gain and high bit rate systems.
Rather, frequency-hop radio technology proves to be more
suitable since the instantaneous bandwidth is equal to the
bit rate which is on the order of several megabits/sec, a
speed well within reach of current high resolution ADC
technology. To achieve the high processing gain, however,
still requires a high RF transmission bandwidth hundreds
of mega Hertz wide. This challenge is met with a multiband RF front-end technology which enables the radio to
hop over non-contiguously assigned bandwidth. Current
frequency-hop radios operate in the 2.4 GHz ISM band
and can achieve at most 79 hops at 1-2 Mbps. Figure 3
shows a multiband 25-2500 MHz direct conversion RF
technology (Rockwell) that will enable a system to obtain
greater than 79 hops by hopping over non-contiguously
assigned bands at data rates up to 2 Mbps. This would not
have been possible with single band radios.
As shown in Figure 3, the three main components in the
multiband RF front-ends are (1) the wideband low noise

4.0 Maximum Likelihood Sequence Equalizer Modem for High Bit Rate Outdoors

2.5

1.0
0.5

ADC
DAC
Mixer (Down)
PA (100 mW)

1.5
LNA
Mixer (Up)

Power (W)

2.0

0.0

Multiband Radio Architecture

Prototype Multiband Radio

RF Component

Figure 3 Multiband RF technology enables high processing gain and high bit rate operation.
3

PA (500 mW)
LO
Regulator
Modem
Interface

The multiband RF meets the large RF bandwidth requirement for a robust processing-gain adaptive system
that can deliver up to 2 Mbps, satisfying the QoS constraint for multimedia communications over interference
limited environment. The remaining challenge lies in the
clean reception of a 2 Mbps signal over severe multipath
fading environment typically found outdoors. Traditional
decision feedback equalization (DFE) with feed-forward
equalization (FFE) is not adequate for the mobile outdoor
channel. Rather MLSE shows promise in achieving significantly higher SNR performance over the DFE/FFE approach [7] as well as being able to estimate the channel
impulse response much quicker than an LMS-trained
DFE/FFE modem.
The performance gain of MLSE comes at a cost of increased complexity compared to DFE/FFE. The complexity is exponentially related to the delay spread. To keep the
complexity within 50 kgates, the transmit power has been
limited to 100 mW suitable for microcellular systems in
which the delay spread can be kept within 3 s , unlike
systems such as GSM which must accomodate for larger
delay spreads of 5 20s due to the high transmitter
power.
Additionally, MLSE tend to be highly sensitive to frequency drifts in the carrier due to either frequency stability
of the oscillator or doppler shifts over long packets. Frequency drift poses less problem in most current systems
which are voice-based due to short frame sizes. However,

as PCS bands that can be shared through decentralized dynamic channel assignment [8]. A multimedia system that
can combat high interference levels must achieve both
high processing gain and high data rate. This combination
requires a large RF bandwidth which makes direct-sequence a poor choice due to high speed digital circuits and
high power ADCs. A multiband RF technology has been
described that can frequency hop over non-contiguously
assigned bands over a 25 MHz to 2500 MHz range. The
2.5 GHz hop bandwidth meets the large bandwidth requirement needed to achieve 2 Mbps and greater than 21
dB of processing gain. The multiband RF front-end can be
implemented with a low power of 4.5 W which is comparable to current commercial single-band radios. Finally, to
cope with the degradation incurred by large delay spread
and rapid time variations in a mobile outdoor channel at a
high bit rate of 2 Mbps, a MLSE modem with PSP-based
frequency tracking has been presented which can achieve
a BER of 10 4 at an Eb/No of 20 dB with a mobility of 100
km/hr.

for multimedia systems which must provide data services,

long packets are desirable for high throughput. Therefore,
to meet the data service throughput requirement, frequency tracking becomes necessary.
The equalizer architecture with frequency tracking is
shown in Figure 4. This is a closed-loop architecture
which has an interesting design problem associated with
the large delay (D) in the loop. D is due to the decision delay through the Viterbi algorithm residing within the
MLSE and can cause instability and performance degradation. Using per-survivor (PSP) channel tracking, the
sensitivity to delay can be reduced significantly to achieve
1000 times improvement in BER at an Eb/No of 20 dB. As

multiband
rf front-end

channel estimator
timing recovery
MLSE

digital

z-D

AGC
VCO

packet detector
frequency
estimator

adaptive
coefficient
tracking

loop
filter

TRACKING SUBSYSTEM

recon
filter

Acknowledgments

Figure 4 Maximum likelihood equalizer modem architecture with conventional frequency tracking.

This work was supported under DARPA/ITO Contract

#DABT63-95-C-0100.

shown in Figure 5, the modified architecture achieves a

0.01% BER at an Eb/No of 20 dB with a 3 s delay spread
and up to 1200 Hz of residual frequency offset due to doppler shift at 100 km/hr and 2.5 ppm stability for the crystal
reference. The results are simulated with a packet size of
1.5 kB, a typical length for an ethernet data packet.
0.5

1.5

log(BER)

[1]

o - 0 Hz offset
* - 600 Hz offset
- 1200 Hz offset

[2]

conventional
tracking
architecture

2
2.5

performance
gain

3.5
4
14

16

18

20

22

24

[3]

PSP-based
tracking
architecture

4.5
12

References

[4]

26

Eb/No (dB)

Figure 5 The performance of MLSE at 100 km/hr.

and with a 2.4 GHz RF carrier.

[5]

5.0 Conclusions

[6]

In conclusion, we have demonstrated the use of an

adaptive processing-gain direct-sequence spread-spectrum radio to stabilize the throughput (QoS) needed for
multimedia communications in an interference limited environment, typical in shared bands which are becoming
prevalent as frequency spectrum has already become overly congested. Shared bands include the ISM bands as well

[7]
[8]

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