[sci.electronics] Stealth Radio

guest@hyper.UUCP (guest) (03/01/88)

>> re discussion of the eventual flood of stealth (i.e. spread spectrum)
>> signals that the FCC will be unable to understand, let alone detect!

> As to your second argument, spread spectrum does raise the noise floor over
> the bandwidth used; the same technology that is making spread spectrum a 
> fact of life is also make spectrum monitors more sophisticated.  So, although
> I can't understand what you're saying, I can tell that you're sending
> something. ...

Direct sequence spread spectrum modulation sprays
its instantaneous energy into a wide (discretely granular) band.
At least 10mhz with no real upper limit. Thus the signal
density at any discrete point is very low, under the noise
floor.  Then the profile of the energy is rearranged
by a pseudo random number generator.  Once per bit sent
in fact.  In other words the energy sent is all over the
place.  Only an informed receiver can sync and correlate
the signal. The act of correlating averages the incoming discrete
energies, thus the signal pops out of the noise floor -- statistically
speaking.

The April 1987 issue of Radio-Electronics has an article about it.

The only way to detect the existence of the signal is to
monitor a very wide band, and somehow guess the PN sequence.
Sounds pretty tricky to me.  Sure any code can be broken, but
it makes it harder when you have to break the code before you
can see it!!!!!!!

John Logajan            umn-cs!hyper!ns!logajan
Network Systems Corp
7600 Boone Ave
Brooklyn Park, MN  55428