Trellis-coded direct-sequence spread-spectrum communications

This paper considers the application of trellis coding techniques to direct-sequence spread-spectrum multiple-access (DS/SSMA) communication. The unique feature of the trellis codes considered is that they are constructed over the set of possible signature sequences rather than over some standard 2-D signal constellation. The resulting codes have a small number of signals per dimension. We present several examples of these trellis codes, and suggest possible methods of implementation. We also present a detailed error analysis for this system, which employs techniques developed by Lehnert and Pursley (1987, 1989)) to accurately model the multiple access interference. We generate numerical results for several examples and conclude that the proposed trellis coded systems yield significant performance improvements over binary antipodal DS/SSMA systems. In addition, the new trellis codes perform better than standard error control techniques with the same complexity and code rate. Analytic results are verified with simulations