An Analysis of Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) of Ultra Wideband(UWB) and IEEE 802.11A Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Employing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)

Abstract

Military communications require the rapid deployment of mobile, high-bandwidth systems. These systems must provide anytime, anywhere capabilities with minimal interference to existing military, private, and commercial communications. Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology is being advanced as the next generation radio technology and has the potential to revolutionize indoor wireless communications. The ability of UWB to mitigate multipath fading, provide high-throughput data rates (e.g., greater than 100 Mbps), provide excellent signal penetration (e.g., through walls), and low implementation costs makes it an ideal technology for a wide range of private and public sector applications. Preliminary UWB studies conducted by The Institute for Telecommunications Science (ITS) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have discovered that potential exists for harmful interference to occur. While these studies have provided initial performance estimates, the interference effects of UWB transmissions on coexisting spectral users are largely unknown. This research characterizes the electromagnetic interference (EMI) effects of UWB on the throughput performance of an IEEE 802.11a ad-hoc network. Radiated measurements in an anechoic chamber investigate interference performance using three modulation schemes (BPSK, BPPM, and OOK) and four pulse repetition frequencies over two Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) channels. Results indicate that OOK and BPPM can degrade throughput performance by up to 20% at lower pulse repetition frequencies (PRFs) in lower U-NII channels. Minimal performance degradation (less than one percent) due to interference was observed for BPSK at the lower PRFs and higher U-NII channels.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADA426577

Entities

People

  • Juan Lopez Jr.

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Biomedical
  • Cyber
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Application Software
  • Communication Channels
  • Communication Systems
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Networks
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Data Links
  • Digital Communications
  • Electronic Mail
  • Information Science
  • Knowledge Management
  • Multiple Access
  • Network Protocols
  • Operating Systems
  • Radio Communications

Readers

  • Radar Systems Engineering.
  • Radio communications and signal processing.

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control