SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I research project will analyze and design a wideband wireless network for the transmission of transaction traffic, file traffic and digital voice traffic. Multiple access protocols are used to permit independent transmitters to share a single communication channel. When the number of transmitters is large or when the duty cycle of individual transmitters is small a random access multiple access protocol is usually required. Spread ALOHA is a new random access protocol which can operate at a data rate 50 or more times that of conventional protocols. Spread ALOHA uses a single spreading code to transmit signals from an unlimited number of remote transmitters. In this research project it is planned to analyze and design an improved form of Spread ALOHA which uses two codes rather than one for all transmitters. By means of the second code it is possible to greatly increase the throughput in wideband wireless networks with significant amounts of file and voice traffic. This research can be used to build less expensive, more efficient personal communication services (PCS) networks integrating transaction traffic, file traffic and digital voice traffic.

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase 11 project involves the design and construction of a packet radio network based upon a broadband connection free protocol for integration of transaction, file and digital voice in a common channel. Multiple access protocols are used to permit independent transmitters to share a common communication channel. When the number of transmitters is large and the network is required to support a variety of different kinds of traffic a connection free multiple access protocol is often required. Spread ALOHA Multiple Access (SAMA) is such a protocol, combining the proven simplicity and operational flexibility of an ALOHA multiple access channel with the high bandwidth and high throughput of a spread spectrum channel. In this Phase II project we plan to modify an existing SAMA packet radio network to implement a new efficient protocol for the seamless integration of a wide variety of traffic types in a common channel This new wideband version of SAMA will have commercial applications in PCS networks which must integrate data into a voice oriented architecture and in VSAT networks which must integrate voice into a data oriented architecture.