Symbol shaping for Barker spread Wi-Fi communications

This paper details the progressive development of symbol shaping for Barker spread IEEE 802.11 modulation used in wireless fidelity communications. Symbol shaping is used to satisfy the spectral mask requirements of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with minimal output filtering and inter-symbol interference. Logarithmic, sinusoidal, and sine-function shaping is investigated using analytic, simulation, and experimental methods. Power spectral densities are compared to the FCC mask to determine the effectiveness of the symbol shaping. Bit error rate is evaluated to provide a performance metric for each symbol shape. A complete experimental system has been implemented as a test bed for this research.