A method of characterizing a LoRa modulated signal or any such signals with a plurality of chirps as symbols. It foresees sampling and storing the signal, determining a phase of at least one chirp in the signal, and determining a timing error and/or a frequency error based on the phase, The timing error is extracted by the height of a discontinuous step in the phase at the position of the cyclical shift, while the frequency error is obtained by the slope of the phase. The method can be applied to a dedicated receiver for the characterization of LoRa transmitters.

Methods for building, transmitting, and receiving frame structures in power line communications (PLC) are described. Various techniques described herein provide a preamble design using one or more symbols. One or more preamble symbols may be interspersed within a header portion of a PLC frame to facilitate estimation of a frame boundary and/or sampling frequency offset, for example, in the presence of impulsive noise.

Systems for communicating data through a satellite are disclosed. The systems generally include a radio designed for terrestrial communications that is configured to uplink data to one or more satellites. The one or more satellites are configured to receive the data from the terrestrial radio. In addition, the systems include terrestrial receivers, such as one or more chirp spread spectrum radios, positioned at ground level, which are configured to receive the data from the one or more satellites.

A non-coherent long range (LoRa) communication system based on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology, including a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is configured to transmit signals to the receiver, and the receiver is configured to receive and demodulate the signals. The transmitter includes a bit-symbol converter, a space-time mapper, and a plurality of transmitting antennas. The space-time mapper is configured to select a transmit antenna for the signal in each transmission time slot and transmit a base Chirp signal x.sub.0 and the modulating signal x.sub.m to the receiver in different time slots. The receiver includes a plurality of receiving antennas. The receiving antenna is configured to preprocess the signal to obtain a first cache matrix and a second cache matrix. After Hadamard product operation is performed on the first and second cache matrixes, operation results of the receiving antennas are accumulated and demodulated to output demodulated information bits.

A chirp spread spectrum (CSS) receiver may reject, based on multiple data alignment chirps that includes an attribute identifier that is a mismatch to one or more preconfigured identifiers, a message early and before fully receiving/decoding the message. The multiple data alignment chirps may enable usage of a larger range of IDs than a single chirp signal. A receiver may receive a sequence of training chirps for symbol alignment followed by multiple opposite chirps for data alignment. Training chirps may be processed through a fast-Fourier transform (FFT) and the resulting values accumulated until a threshold is exceeded. Using symbol alignment from the training chirps, the receiver may decode multiple opposite chirps that indicate data alignment and comprise an encoded identifier. The receiver may reject the message and terminate further message processing based on the encoded identifier being a mismatch to preconfigured identifiers or attributes indicated by the encoded identifier.

Techniques described here introduce signature frequency modulation to unmodulated pulse signals as frequency chirps to enhance the security of multi-carrier phase-based ranging signals. The characteristics of the chirps may be mutually known by an initiator and a desired reflector of the ranging applications. The characteristics of the chirps may vary between the multi-carrier signals to thwart any attempt by an eavesdropper to predict the chirps. In one aspect, the characteristics of the chirps may be calculated for each timeslot of a ranging cycle by two authorized devices using a ciphering algorithm such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) based on a shared security key. Each call of the AES may generate one or more pseudo-random numbers based on the shared security key and a time-varying initialization vector that increments every timeslot. Fields of the pseudo-random number may be extracted to determine the characteristics of the chirps associated with the timeslot.

A surface-launched acoustic wave sensor tag system for remotely sensing and/or providing identification information using sets of surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor tag devices is characterized by acoustic wave device embodiments that include coding and other diversity techniques to produce groups of sensors that interact minimally, reducing or alleviating code collision problems typical of prior art coded SAW sensors and tags, and specific device embodiments of said coded SAW sensor tags and systems. These sensor/tag devices operate in a system which consists of one or more uniquely identifiable sensor/tag devices and a wireless interrogator. The sensor device incorporates an antenna for receiving incident RF energy and re-radiating the tag identification information and the sensor measured parameter(s). Since there is no power source in or connected to the sensor, it is a passive sensor. The device is wirelessly interrogated by the interrogator.

Methods for building, transmitting, and receiving frame structures in power line communications (PLC) are described. Various techniques described herein provide a preamble design using one or more symbols. One or more preamble symbols may be interspersed within a header portion of a PLC frame to facilitate estimation of a frame boundary and/or sampling frequency offset, for example, in the presence of impulsive noise.

A method for generating a signal including a temporal succession of modulated chirps. The modulation corresponds to a circular permutation of the variation pattern of the instantaneous frequency of a base chirp over the symbol time Ts, obtained by a time shift of s times an elementary time period Te, such that M*Tc=Ts. Such a method includes, to generate a given chirp in the temporal succession of chirps, differential encoding between a modulation symbol associated with a chirp preceding the given chirp in the temporal succession of chirps, on the one hand, and a given information symbol of the constellation of M symbols, on the other hand, the differential encoding delivering a given modulation symbol; and modulating the base chirp on the basis of the given modulation symbol generating the given chirp.

A system and method for generating communications waveforms that can operate in congested frequency spaces and in applications in which the receiver is moving with respect to the transmitter is provided. In one or more examples, each symbol to be encoded and transmitted is converted into a sequence of frequency chirps. The sequence of frequencies used by the sequence of chirps is based on the symbol that is to be encoded. Each chirp can have a center frequency, and the frequency can be swept over the duration of the chirp. In this way each chirp can have a varying frequency over the duration of the chirp, but the phase of the chirp can be continuous throughout the duration of the chirp. The bandwidth and sweep rate of the chirp can be based on the expected maximum velocity of the receiver and the transmitter relative to one another.