Performance Analysis of the Link-16/JTIDS Waveform with Concatenated Coding

Link-16 is the designation of a tactical data link that is being introduced into operations of the United States Navy, the Joint Services, and forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Link-16 does not significantly change the basic concepts of tactical data link information exchange, but rather provides certain technical and operational improvements to existing tactical data link capabilities. The communication terminal of Link-16 is called the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) and features Reed-Solomon (RS) coding, symbol interleaving, cyclic code-shift keying (CCSK) for M-ary symbol modulation, minimum-shift keying (MSK) for chip modulation and combined frequency-hopping (FH) and direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) for transmission security. In this thesis, we investigate the performance of a Link-16/JTIDS-type waveform in both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and pulsed-noise interference (PNI) when an alternative error correction coding scheme for the physical layer waveform is employed. The performance obtained using the alternative error correction coding scheme is compared to that of the existing JTIDS waveform when the same assumptions have been made for both waveforms. Based on the analyses, we conclude that the proposed alternative Link-16/JTIDS communication scheme performs better than the existing Link-16/JTIDS waveform in both AWGN and PNI for both coherent and noncoherent demodulation in terms of both required signal power and throughput.