Performance evaluation of a near-far resistant frequency-hopping multiple-access communication system

The performance of an FHMA-MFSK (frequency-hopped multiple access multilevel frequency shift keying) system considered as a possible candidate for the European Space Station's communication system is examined. Performance evaluation is based on analyses and simulations, the latter requiring selection of particular system parameters. The driving specification of the envisaged system is the high dynamic range, resulting in considerably large interference-to-desired-signal power ratios. Some form of clipping at the receiver side is mandatory, but performance improvement can be achieved by quantizing the spectrum analyzer output signals to more than single-bit quantization. Furthermore the overall system performance can be considerably improved by applying tone shaping/windowing on the transmitted tones. Care must be taken to provide sufficient tone separation for the envisaged shaping/windowing scheme.<>