Low Probability of Intercept Waveforms via Intersymbol Dither Performance under Multipath Conditions
Date of Award
3-9-2009
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Electrical Engineering
Department
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
First Advisor
Richard K. Martin, PhD
Abstract
This thesis examines the effects of multipath interference on Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) waveforms generated using intersymbol dither. LPI waveforms are designed to be difficult for non-cooperative receivers to detect and manipulate, and have many uses in secure communications applications. In prior research, such a waveform was designed using a dither algorithm to vary the time between the transmission of data symbols in a communication system. This work showed that such a method can be used to frustrate attempts to use non-cooperative receiver algorithms to recover the data. This thesis expands on prior work by examining the effects of multipath interference on cooperative and non-cooperative receiver performance to assess the above method’s effectiveness using a more realistic model of the physical transmission channel. Both two and four ray multipath interference channel models were randomly generated using typical multipath power profiles found in existing literature. Different combinations of maximum allowable symbol delay, pulse shapes and multipath channels were used to examine the bit error rate performance of 1) a Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) cooperative equalizer structure with prior knowledge of the dither pattern and 2) a Constant Modulus Algorithm (CMA) non-cooperative equalizer. Cooperative MMSE equalization resulted in approximately 6-8 dB BER performance improvement in Eb/No over non-cooperative equalization, and for a full range symbol timing dither non-cooperative equalization yields a theoretical BER limit of Pb=10−1. For 50 randomly generated multipath channels, six of the four ray channels and 15 of the two ray channels exhibited extremely poor equalization results, indicating a level of algorithm sensitivity to multipath conditions.
AFIT Designator
AFIT-GE-ENG-09-23
DTIC Accession Number
ADA519648
Recommended Citation
Keen, Jonathan K., "Low Probability of Intercept Waveforms via Intersymbol Dither Performance under Multipath Conditions" (2009). Theses and Dissertations. 2538.
https://scholar.afit.edu/etd/2538