A robust rate-adaptive hybrid ARQ scheme for frequency-hoppedspread-spectrum multiple-access communication systems

This paper considers the application of rate-adaptive coding (RAC) to a spread spectrum multiple access (SSMA) communication system. Specifically, RAC using a variable rate Reed-Solomon (RS) code with a single decoder is applied to frequency-hopped SSMA. We show that this combination can accommodate a larger number of users compared to that with conventional fixed-rate coding. This increase is a result of a reduction in the channel interference from other users. The penalty for this improvement in most cases is a slight increase in the delay (composed of propagation and decoding delay). The throughput and the undetected error probability for a M-ary symmetric channel are analyzed, and performance results are presented