Hybrid Spread-Spectrum Communications for Wireless Instrumentation

摘要

Although several consumer-oriented spread-spectrum commercial wireless signal-transmission protocols are available in the commercial market [e.g., the direct-sequence (DS) WiFi and ZigBee formats and the frequency-hopping (FH) Bluetooth standard], none have proven to be sufficiently robust to operate with high reliability in harsh military, research, and industrial sensor-telemetry and personnel/asset-tracking environments. The presence of large amounts of multipath, noise, and interference in those venues, plus the concurrent need for data security, location tracking, and support for operating hundreds of devices in close proximity, clearly dictates the use of next-generation transmission techniques. ORNL has recently developed an innovative synergistic combination of DS and FH (plus time hopping), termed hybrid spread-spectrum (HSS), which effectively addresses all the above requirements in a highly adaptable, software-programmable manner. From this theoretical base we are developing proof-of-principle sensor/telemetry devices, networks, and data-handling systems which will conclusively demonstrate a robust, compact, cost-efficient, low-power hardware suite and architecture for achieving intelligent wireless networking of advanced sensors and data-processors for scientific research, environmental monitoring, military, waste management, hazardous materials transport, homeland security, biomedical, and numerous other applications for the next decade and beyond. This integrated technology is of great interest to numerous Government agencies and private industry, and as an enabling technology will spawn a wide variety of follow-on work in the sensor, environmental, data-networking, military, and national-security arenas. Ultimate applications are anticipated to include advanced wireless technologies, data-processing systems, sensors, low-power electronics, and telemetry for biomedical instrumentation.