Near-Far Problem as a Function of Analog to Digital Converter Resolution in Software Defined Radio Tactical Network

Software-defined radios (SDR) based tactical networks have great significance in hostile scenarios primarily due to their ease of deployment and reconfiguration capabilities. These implementations are without the requirement of any permanent immovable infrastructure which makes them feasible for various law enforcement deployments. These self-healing and self-forming networks can operate over a significantly wide range with the help of various waveforms. This paper discusses a temporal domain issue faced in SDR tactical networks which arise due to different geographical distances between communicating nodes. This is referred to as a near-far problem and it is critical as it affects the performance of the network. This paper also proposes a hypothetical solution utilizing the reduced analog to digital converter (ADC) resolution that can cater to this problem. The proposed scheme is validated by simulations which proposes the concept of frequency selective gains to be used instead of operating on time domain-based Automatic Gain Controllers (AGC). The concept is proposed for the state-of-the-art hybrid narrowband wideband receiver; however, the entire discussion is valid for any TDMA/FDMA-based SDR networks.