A Novel Non-Coherent <i>Q</i>-Ary TH-PPM Transceiver

Abstract

Time-hopping pulse position modulation (TH-PPM) stands out as a secure communication due to the pseudo-random characteristics of its time-hopping sequence. However, the conventional TH-PPM transceiver encounters challenges in implementation, particularly in achieving the requisite high precision for synchronization. This paper introduces a novel non-coherent Q-ary TH-PPM transceiver, designed to surpass the Bit error rate (BER) performance of conventional TH-PPM transceivers in scenarios under non-ideal synchronization conditions, which also being straightforward to implement. Firstly, we provide an overview of the conventional TH-PPM transceiver. Secondly, the novel TH-PPM transceiver is introduced. In this context, a novel method for generating the TH-PPM signal is proposed for the transmitter, and a parallel matched-filter algorithm, adapted to the new TH-PPM signal, is presented for the receiver. Subsequently, the investigation delves into an in-depth analysis of BER performance, considering both ideal synchronization conditions and non-ideal synchronization conditions, for both the conventional and the new TH-PPM transceiver. Furthermore, the paper proposes a numerical simulation to validate the theoretical findings. The results demonstrate that the new TH-PPM transceiver outperforms the conventional counterpart by showing better BER performance in scenarios with non-ideal synchronization conditions.

Keywords

• secure communication
• <i>Q</i>-ary
• time-hopping
• pulse position modulation
• non-coherent transceiver
• bit error rate