The aim of the C-Levitonics ERC PoC project was to show the application potential a new waveform for the applied field of Digital Communications and possible other fields. The new waveform proposed here originated from Quantum Physics (the levitons) where is was discovered that a particular frequency modulation of a carrier wave can directly generate a Single Side Band (SSB) spectrum (i.e. all energy spanning in a frequency range above the carrier wave frequency) . Applied to digital phase modulation, a technique widely used in cell phone technology, direct SSB frequency modulation is new and is expected to provide a very narrow spectrum compared with existing modulation waveforms. After a full century of telecommunication engineer research to find a way to use SSB for communications and, so, save frequency occupation, this new patented (levitonic) waveform, called SSB-FSK, was never intuited.
In this 18-month work, we started from a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 1 and ended to TRL 3, bringing the concept closer to real applications. We have compared SSB-FSK to existing waveforms used in cell phone communication by computing its spectral efficiency and Bit Error Rate in presence of external noise. We have found very efficient ways, at very low resource cost, to demodulate the received signal to recover the bit information. We have implemented the binary levitonic phase pulses in a software radio module and have actually observed the narrow single-side band spectrum genrated by SSB-FSK. At the end of the project, all these results encourage us to go on further with our patented SSB-FSK modulation to reach, in a few year, the TRL6 level and to start having fructuous contacts with industrial companies.
Finally the SSB levitonic frequency modulation can also find application in FM music synthesis for timbre generation or for direct chord synthesis or can find application in Radar Doppler velocimetry.
