L-3 Communications Corporation

Unisys Corporation

Robert W Steagall

Thomas R Giallorenzi

Steven T Barham

Samuel Charles Kingston

Patrick J Smith

Johnny M Harris

Bruce H Williams

Philip L Stephenson

David W Matolak

Leon L Nieczyporowicz

David William Matolak

Michael J Hurst

John W Love

Users or subscribers of a spread spectrum synchronous communications system provide signals to the central station or base unit of that system, and receive signals therefrom. Proper synchronization among those users (and their signals) is needed to ensure proper operation of the system. To ensure proper synchronization among those users, the signal produced by each user is checked for presence and amount of any offset error. This is accomplished by using three despreaders for the signal for each user. For one such user, each such despreader for that user receives the spreading code for that user. However, the spreading code as received by any one such despreader is time-delayed with respect to the spreading code as received by the other two despreaders. Each such despreader receives the spreading code with a different amount of delay imposed on that spreading code. The outputs of the three despreaders are digitally combined (e.g. compared), or compared, to produce the offset estimate for that user. To reduce noise effects, the offset estimate is averaged over a predetermined time duration; alternatively, such averaging can be performed on the outputs of the despreaders, or at some intermediate processing step. The offset estimate is sent to the user, to be used to correct synchronization of that user. Offset estimates that are too small to be useful are squelched and are not so sent to the user, to reduce channel usage and thereby save bandwidth.

Synchronizer and method therefor and communications system incorporating same

Disclosed is a method for operating a fixed wireless system (FWS) having a radio base unit (RBU) that uses a code division multiple access (CDMA) airlink for communicating with a plurality of subscriber units (SUs) within a coverage area of the RBU. The method includes establishing, from a set of pseudonoise (PN) spreading codes, a subset of PN spreading codes that are currently assigned to SUs and a subset of PN spreading codes that are currently not assigned to SUs. The method further ranks the PN spreading codes from the subset of non-assigned PN spreading codes by an amount of interference experienced by the use of each non-assigned PN spreading code, and assigns to an SU requiring a PN spreading code a PN spreading code from the set of non-assigned PN spreading codes that is ranked as having a least amount of interference. The step of ranking the non-assigned PN spreading codes is preferably performed periodically, and includes the steps of assigning, in turn, individual ones of the PN spreading codes from the set of non-assigned PN spreading codes to a correlator of the RBU, and determining an amount of noise output from the correlator resulting from the use of the PN spreading code.

Fixed wireless loop system that ranks non-assigned PN codes to reduce

Synchronizer and method therefor and communications system incorporating

Disclosed are methods and apparatus for use in a synchronous CDMA communications system (10) that employs orthogonal pn spreading codes. The methods are intended for synchronizing transmissions from a subscriber unit (SU 14) to a radio base unit (RBU 12), and include the steps of: (a) transmitting individual ones of a plurality of bursts from the SU to the RBU, each burst being transmitted with a different pn spreading code timing alignment; (b) receiving individual ones of the plurality of bursts with the RBU and determining a power estimate of each received burst; and (c) in response to a determined power estimate of one of the bursts exceeding a threshold, sending a message from the RBU to the SU. The message indicates that the SU is to use for subsequent transmissions the pn spreading code timing alignment that was employed when transmitting the burst that exceeded the threshold. In a preferred embodiment of this invention the step of transmitting transmits an indication of the pn spreading code timing alignment used when transmitting a given one of the bursts. Each burst is transmitted with a pn spreading code timing alignment that differs by 1/2 chip from a previous pn spreading code timing alignment.

Multi-user acquisition procedure for multipoint-to-point synchronous

An electronic data transmission system has a low peak-to-average power ratio by including a transmitter circuit which receives an input signal and in response generates a distorted output signal. This distorted output signal is generated by amplifying the input signal with one particular gain when the input signal is at a maximum magnitude which gives the distorted output signal a corresponding maximum magnitude, and by amplifying the input signal with a larger gain when the input signal is in a predetermined range below the maximum magnitude. The distorted output signal travels over a communication channel to a receiver circuit, which regenerates the input signal by amplifying the distorted output signal with a gain that is the inverse of the gain by which the distorted signal is generated.

Data transmisson system with a low peak-to-average power ratio based on

An interface for coupling a standard telephone set to a distributed digital network for allowing digital voice communication over the distributed network such that the utilization of the distributed network is wholly transparent to the user. An interface is provided for each telephone set. Each interface includes a state machine, a coder/decoder and a digital tone generator. The state machine is responsive to analog control signals from the telephone set to generate digital control signals to be transmitted over the distributed network. The state machine is also responsive to digital control signals to control the digital waveform generator to generate supervisory tones which are relayed to the user by the telephone set. The state machine also monitors the operation of the corresponding state machine or machines in a normal or conference call and sends control signals to resolve inconsistent states of the respective state machines, resulting in a high degree of fault tolerance and independence from network protocols.

Voice server for digital communication network

An arrangement for conducting a conference call over a distributed digital network in which, at each station connected to the conference call, only voice packets from the other stations connected to the conference call are received. To avoid the need for synchronization between stations connected to the conference call, a local time base is established to define a sequence of periodic intervals during which a single voice packet will be accepted from each station connected to the conference call. The interval is advantageously set to be approximately equal the sampling period for data in a received data packet which will be reasonably uniform for all stations on the network. This provides that, typically, a maximum of one data packet will be received from any selected station during a single time base interval. The time base interval can be adaptively adjusted by monitoring the transmission queues of the local or other stations connected to the conference call and the interval can be reduced if a transmission queue exceeds a predetermined length.

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North Salt Lake, UT, United States of America

Robert W Steagall