Optimization of the Processing Gain of and M-ary Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum Communication System

Abstract

In most realistic communication systems, be they spread spectrum or conventional systems, some overall bandwidth constraint is usually placed upon the system. In the case of spread spectrum communications, this constraint limits the amount of processing gain that the system can employ. In addition to processing gain, factors such as alphabet size affect the total bandwidth. It is the purpose of this paper to combine these two effects to determine how one should trade off the amount of processing gain one uses relative to the underlying modulation bandwidth when one is operating under the constraint of fixed total system bandwidth.