Low-complexity erasure insertion in frequency-hopping spread-spectrum communications subjected to fading and partial-band interference

We propose two novel low-complexity, low-delay erasure insertion schemes, namely the output threshold test (OTT) and joint maximum output and ratio threshold test (MO-RTT). The employment of the OTT and MO-RTT is beneficial in the context of ´errors-and-erasures´ (EAE) Reed-Solomon (RS) decoding in a slow frequency-hopping based spread-spectrum (SFH/SS) system using M-ary frequency-shift keying (MFSK). The statistics of the erasure insertion related decision variables associated with the OTT and MO-RTT as well as with the ratio threshold test (RTT) are investigated, when the channel of each FH slot is modeled as flat Nakagami-m fading. The transmitted signals also experience both additive white gaussian noise (AWGN) and partial-band Gaussian interference (PBGI). The performance of the proposed erasure insertion schemes and that of the erasure insertion scheme using the RTT is investigated and compared in the context of RS coded SFH/SS systems using MFSK modulation