FHSS IMPLEMENTATION ON SDR PLATFORM BY GENERATING HIGHLY SECURED HOPPING PATTERNS

Abstract

Software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication technology in which the functionality is defined in the software instead of hardware. This allows for easy, efficient and low-cost upgrades as no hardware replacement is required. The software radio will use frequency hopping as the frequency translation scheme for robust and reliable communication. In Frequency hopping, the radio frequency of transmission continuously changes according to a pseudorandom pattern known only to the transmitter and receiver. This scheme makes the communication link more robust to the affects of jammers. Therefore frequency hopping offers a more secure mode of communication in comparison to conventional fixed frequency telecommunication links. The proposed transceiver design will be implemented on an SDR platform which has an inbuilt RF module. Therefore, most of the transceiver operations such as digital signal processing, amplification, equalization and filtering will be software based. SDR implementation makes it easier to improve and redesign the components in software. The transceiver design is such as to allow all signal processing and data acquisition to take place at baseband frequencies after elimination of intermediate frequency (IF). This means there is less power consumption. The transceiver will be a slow frequency hopping system (SFH) which means that the hopping rate will be lower than symbol transmission rate. We will use Quaternary Frequency Shift Keying (QFSK) in which each symbol is itself represented by a particular frequency determined by the two bits present in the symbol