Real-Time Implementation of STANAG 4539 High-Speed HF Modem

High-frequency (HF) communications have been used by military organizations for more than 90 years. The opportunity of very long range communications without the need for advanced equipment makes HF a convenient and inexpensive alternative of satellite communications. Besides the advantages, voice and data transmission over HF is a challenging task, because the HF channel generally suffers from Doppler shift and spread, multi-path, cochannel interference, and many other sources of noise. In constructing an HF data modem, all these effects must be taken into account. STANAG 4539 is a NATO standard for high-speed data transmission over HF. It allows data rates up to 12800 bps over an HF channel of 3 kHz. In this work, an efficient implementation of STANAG 4539 on a single Texas Instruments- TMS320C6747 DSP chip is described. The state-of-the-art algorithms used in the receiver and the efficiency of the implementation enables real-time high-speed data / digitized voice transmission over poor HF channels.





References:
[1] "Radio Communications in the Digital Age, Volume 1: HF Technology
(Edition 2)”, Harris Corporation, 2005.
[2] STANAG 4539, "Technical Standards for Non-Hopping HF
Communications Waveforms”, NATO, 2005.
[3] MIL-STD-188-110B, "Military Standard - Interoperability and
Performance Standards for Data Modems”, US Dept. of Defence, 2000.
[4] STANAG 4415, "Characteristics of a Robust Non-Hopping Serial Tone
Modulator/Demodulator for Severely Degraded HF Radio Links”,
NATO, 1997.
[5] "OMAP-L137 Evaluation Module Technical Reference”, Spectrum
Digital, Inc., 2008.
[6] SPRS377D, "TMS320C6745, TMS320C6747 Fixed-Floating-Point
Digital Signal Processor Datasheet”, Texas Instruments, 2010.
[7] R. C. Heimiller, "Phase Shift Pulse Codes with Good Periodic
Correlation Properties”, IRE Trans. Info. Theory IT-6, pp. 254-257, Oct.
1961.
[8] J. Proakis, "Digital Communications”, McGraw Hill, 4th Edition, 2000.
[9] H. Meyr, M. Moeneclaey, S. A. Fechtel, "Digital Communication
Receivers, Synchronization, Channel Estimation, and Signal
Processing”, Wiley-Interscience, 1997.
[10] SPRU657C, "TMS320C67x DSP Library Programmer's Reference
Guide”, Texas Instruments, 2008.
[11] SPRU187Q, "TMS320C6000 Optimizing Compiler”, Texas
Instruments, 2010.
[12] ITU, "Recommendation 520-1 Use of High FrequencyIonospheric
Channel Simulators”, Recommendations and Reports of the CCIR, Vol.
III, pp. 57-58, Geneva.