Erik Perrins

Highly-Dynamic Cross-Layered Aeronautical Network Architecture

Highly-dynamic wireless environments present unique challenges to end-to-end communication networks, caused by the time-varying connectivity of high-velocity nodes combined with the unreliability of the wireless communication channel. Such conditions are found in a variety of networks, including those used for tactical communications and aeronautical telemetry. Addressing these challenges requires the design of new protocols and mechanisms specific to this environment. We present a new domain-specific architecture and protocol suite, including cross-layer optimizations between the physical, MAC, network, and transport layers. This provides selectable reliability for multiple applications within highly mobile tactical airborne networks. Our contributions for this environment include the transmission control protocol (TCP)-friendly transport protocol, AeroTP; the IP-compatible network layer, AeroNP; and the geolocation aware routing protocol AeroRP. Through simulations we show significant performance improvement over the traditional TCP/IP/MANET protocol stack.

PAM decomposition of M-ary multi-h CPM

It is known that any multilevel continuous phase-modulated (CPM) signal with a single modulation index can be exactly represented by a sum of pulse-amplitude modulated (PAM) waveforms. In this paper, we show how multi-h CPM signals can also be represented in this manner. The decomposition is presented in general terms as a function of the alphabet size, modulation indexes, and phase pulse of the CPM scheme. The number of pulses required to exactly construct the signal is shown to increase over that previously given for single-h schemes; this increase is in proportion to the number of modulation indexes. We propose an approximation which significantly reduces the number of signal pulses and which minimizes the mean-squared error for an arbitrary set of modulation indexes. We show that this approximation can have two objectives: 1) to reduce the number of pulses in the same manner as has been proposed for single-h schemes; and/or 2) to reduce the number of multi-h pulses; we also show the conditions where this latter objective is most practical. We compare this minimum mean-squared error approximation with another method which was recently proposed for CPM. We also give numerical results on detection performance which demonstrate the practicality of the proposed approximation.

Reduced-Complexity Approach to Iterative Detection of Coded SOQPSK

We develop a reduced-complexity approach for the detection of coded shaped-offset quadrature phase-shift keying (SOQPSK), a highly bandwidth-efficient and popular constant-envelope modulation. The complexity savings result from viewing the signal as a continuous-phase modulation (CPM). We give a simple and convenient closed-form expression for a recursive binary-to-ternary precoder for SOQPSK. The recursive nature of this formulation is necessary in serially concatenated systems where SOQPSK serves as the inner code. We show that the proposed detectors are optimal in the full-response case, and are near-optimal in the partial-response case due to some additional complexity reducing approximations. In all cases, the proposed detectors achieve large coding gains for serially concatenated coded SOQPSK. These gains are similar to those reported recently by Li and Simon, which were obtained using a more complicated cross-correlated trellis-coded quadrature modulation (XTCQM) interpretation.

Introducing Kansas lava

Kansas Lava is a domain specific language for hardware description. Though there have been a number of previous implementations of Lava, we have found the design space rich, with unexplored choices. We use a direct (Chalmers style) specification of circuits, and make significant use of Haskell overloading of standard classes, leading to concise circuit descriptions. Kansas Lava supports both simulation (inside GHCi), and execution via VHDL, by having a dual shallow and deep embedding inside our Signal type. We also have a lightweight sized-type mechanism, allowing for MATLAB style matrix based specifications to be directly expressed in Kansas Lava.

Cross-layer architectural framework for highly-mobile multihop airborne telemetry networks

Highly dynamic mobile wireless networks present unique challenges to end-to-end communication, particularly caused by the time varying connectivity of high-velocity nodes combined with the unreliability of the wireless communication channel. Addressing these challenges requires the design of new protocols and mechanisms specific to this environment. Our research explores the tradeoffs in the location of functionality such as error control and location management for high-velocity multihop airborne sensor networks and presents cross-layer optimizations between the MAC, link, network, and transport layers to enable a domain specific network architecture, which provides high reliability for telemetry applications. We have designed new transport, network, and routing protocols for this environment: TCP-friendly AeroTP, IP-compatible AeroNP, and AeroRP, and show significant performance improvement over the traditional TCP/IP/MANET protocol stack.

CPM-based radar waveforms for efficiently bandlimiting a transmitted spectrum

In this paper we shall demonstrate how a polyphase-coded radar waveform can be implemented using a continuous phase modulation (CPM) framework so as to achieve spectral containment while maintaining a constant envelope to maximize energy-on-target. Current modulation techniques such as derivative phase shift keying (DPSK) and minimum shift keying (MSK), which are applicable to binary-coded waveforms, are well-known implementation schemes for spectral containment. The CPM implementation is applicable to polyphase codes and can also achieve better spectral containment, though a by-product is increased range sidelobes that result due to the deviation from the idealized code (implicitly defined for squared-shaped chips). To ameliorate the increased range sidelobes, a version of Least-Squares mismatched filtering is employed that accommodates the continuous nature of the CPM structure. Also, continuous rise/fall-time transitions of the pulse are addressed as part of the holistic implementation of the CPM-based waveform. It is observed that for the CPM implementation the rise/fall-time becomes the limiting factor on spectral containment and a rather simple scheme based on Chireaux out-phasing is suggested as a means to “slow down” the pulse rise/fall.

Near Optimal Common Detection Techniques for Shaped Offset QPSK and Feher's QPSK

A detector architecture capable of detecting both shaped offset quadrature phase shift keying (SOQPSK-TG) and Fehers quadrature phase shift keying (FQPSK-JR) is developed and analyzed. Both modulations are embodied as fully interoperable modulations in the Interrange Instrumentation Group (IRIG) standard IRIG-106. It is shown that the common detector achieves near optimal bit error rate performance without knowledge of which modulation is used by the transmitter. The detection techniques are based on a common trellis-coded modulation representation and a common continuous phase modulation (CPM) representation for these two modulations. In addition the common pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) decomposition of the common CPM representation is developed. The common PAM-based detector offers the best performance- complexity trade-off among the detectors considered.

PAM representation of ternary CPM

This letter considers the pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) representation of continuous phase modulation (CPM) with a ternary data alphabet. This technique is applied to the problem of constructing reduced-complexity detectors with near-optimum performance. The usefulness of this approach is demonstrated using the ternary CPM variant known as shaped-offset quadrature phase-shift keying (SOQPSK).

A new performance bound for PAM-based CPM detectors

It is well understood that the pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) representation of continuous phase modulation (CPM) can lead to reduced-complexity detectors with near optimum performance. It has recently been shown that the PAM representation also extends to CPM schemes with multiple modulation indexes (multi-h CPM). In this paper, we present a detector for multi-h CPM which is based on the PAM representation. We also give an exact expression for the pairwise error probability for the entire class of PAM-based CPM detectors (single- and multi-h, optimal, and reduced-complexity) over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel and show that this bound is tighter than the previously published bound for approximate PAM-based detectors. In arriving at this expression, we show that PAM-based detectors for CPM are a special case of the broad class of mismatched CPM detectors. We also show that the metrics for PAM-based detectors accumulate distance in a different manner than metrics for other CPM detectors. These distance properties are especially useful in applications with greatly reduced trellis sizes. We give thorough examples of the analysis for different single- and multi-h signaling schemes. We also apply the new bound in comparing the performance of PAM-based detectors with other reduced-complexity detectors for CPM.

Polyphase-coded FM (PCFM) radar waveforms, part I: implementation

Polyphase radar codes promise enhanced performance and flexibility due to greater design freedom. While the search for better codes continues, the implementation issues of transmitter bandlimiting and nonlinear distortion have precluded their widespread use in high-power systems. This paper introduces a modified continuous phase modulation implementation that converts an arbitrary polyphase code into a nonlinear frequency-modulated waveform that is constant envelope and spectrally well contained. Experimental results assess the receive sampling and pulse compression effects.