Hopping Patterns for Bounded Mutual Interference in Frequency Hopping Multiple Access

Theoretical bounds are given for the number and length of hopping patterns with a guaranteed maximum number of pairwise hits. Constructions for hopping pattern sets which achieve the single hit bounds are given, as well as hopping patterns which guarantee the maximum number of pairwise hits in the presence of time or frequency asynchrony, or both. It is shown that variable rate coding permits "averaging" of the worst case interference compared to fixed rate coding, when the data messages are of varying duration.