A comparison of slow-frequency-hop and direct-sequence spread-spectrum systems for different multipath delay profiles

Slow-frequency-hop (SFH) and direct-sequence (DS) spread-spectrum systems can provide reliable communication over a frequency-selective fading channel by exploiting different properties of the channel's multipath delay profile. The purpose of this paper is to compare the performance of SFH and DS spread-spectrum communication systems for several different channel models. The models represent multipath delay profiles with both deterministic and random components and are chosen to reflect experimental measurements. The SFH and DS systems are defined to be similar in complexity and have the same constraints. Analytical techniques and simulation are used to approximate the probability of bit error for each system. The performance of the SFH system is shown to be less sensitive to the parameters of the channel model than the DS system. For most of the channel models examined, SFH gives better performance than DS.