Chirp Spread Spectrum Signaling for Future Air-Ground Communications

In this paper, we investigate the use of chirp spread spectrum signaling over air-ground channels. This includes evaluation of not only the traditional linear chirp, but also of a new chirp signal format we have devised for multiple access applications. This new format is more practical than prior multi-user chirp systems in the literature, because we allow for imperfect synchronism. Specifically we evaluate multi-user chirp signaling over air-ground channels in a quasi-synchronous condition. The air-ground channels we employ are models based upon an extensive NASA measurement campaign. We show that our new signaling scheme outperforms the classic linear chirp in these air-ground settings.