FHSS Systems:State-of-the-Art and Power Trade-offs

In this chapter an in-depth description of the frequency-hopping spread-spectrum architecture is given. Attention is put on PN-code synchronization algorithms and a review of FHSS state-of-the-art systems is given. After deriving a set of specifications for an FHSS system meant for WSNs, the two most common synthesizer architectures are reviewed in detail. Power models are derived in order to predict the synthesizer power consumption. The models show that a new synthesizer architecture is required in order to scale down its power consumption and to meet the tight power specification of a WSN radio.