Evolving WCDMA for Extreme Mobility

The Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) will provide the warfighter with the tactical ability to communicate in disadvantaged environments. The underlying MUOS concept -- namely, adapting a powerful commercial cellular waveform to a military grade infrastructure -- has applications beyond the initial system deployment. For example, the development of ruggedized WCDMA base station processing payloads would allow the ground station processing to be done aboard the satellite. Furthermore, the geosynchronous satellites of the MUOS system could be replaced by satellites in alternative orbits (e.g., the Molniya orbit) or even unmanned aerial vehicles and aerostats. In order to realize these applications, however, significant innovation is required in WCDMA receiver signal processing algorithm design. To this end, TrellisWare proposes to develop a turbo Rake receiver structure that combines Per-Survivor Processing (PSP) and Adaptive Iterative Detection (AID) to enable reception of the MUOS waveform in severe Doppler environments.