Distress Buoy System Analysis.

Abstract

This report presents a brief analysis and comparison of two candidate approaches to the implementation of a multiple access Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) system for maritime use. One approach uses frequency-shift-keyed (FSK) audio tone pairs for user identification, with detection employing a bank of narrow-band filters. False alarm probabilities and other parameters are calculated for this approach. An alternative to this approach, promising improved performance in the presence of multiple interfering EPIRBs, is also described. This alternative uses orthogonal Pseudo-Noise (PN) spread-spectrum sequences to identify each EPIRB uniquely. These sequences are easily generated using linear shift registers, and the resulting receiver structure is comparable in complexity with that needed for the FSK approach. It is concluded that the acquisition and detection performance of the two approaches is about equal, but that the spread-spectrum method has advantages in a multiple-access environment.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 1978
Accession Number
ADA053676

Entities

People

  • Howard C. Salwen

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Bandpass Filters
  • Coast Guard
  • Communication Systems
  • Data Rate
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • False Alarms
  • Frequency
  • Frequency Shift
  • L Band
  • Multiple Access
  • Radio Beacons
  • Shift Registers
  • Spread Spectrum
  • Transmitters
  • Warning Systems

Readers

  • Maritime Security/Maritime Homeland Security
  • Radio communications and signal processing.