Performance study of chaos-based DSSS and FHSS multi-user communication systems

Deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with a large number of nodes have reinstated interest in spread spectrum (SS) technologies as they allow to establish multiple access for nodes with simple hardware and limited power budget. Chaotic spreading is one of the still insufficiently explored areas which can lead to higher security and lower multiple access interference (MAI). This research is intended to bring new information about the performance of binary direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) and frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) communication systems which employ chaos-based spreading codes and compare them against classical systems employing m-sequences. Unlike existing research, this investigation is based on the simulation of passband communication systems with up/down-conversion and respective filtering. Performance comparison in terms of bit error ratio (BER) versus signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the different number of users and MAI dependence on carrier frequency offset among users in case of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel are presented. Obtained results highlight several scenarios where chaotic-sequences-based binary DSSS and FHSS systems have advantages over classical solutions.