Since the chirp spread spectrum (CSS) system is considered as a communication technology for the Internet of things (IoT), long-range communication and a high data rate are required. In wireless communications, in order to increase spectral efficiency and to extend transmission coverage, a two-path successive relaying (TPSR) protocol has been proposed. Thus, in order to improve transmission performance of the CSS system, in this paper we apply the TPSR protocol to the CSS system. However, since the TPSR protocol is successively relaying data, the spectral efficiency may be limited due to inter-relay interference (IRI). Hence, we propose a multiple linear chirp-based IRI mitigation method for the CSS-based TPSR protocol. In the proposed scheme, the cross-correlation coefficient (CCC) has been derived mathematically according to a separating bandwidth in a given total bandwidth. Then, one separating bandwidth that guarantees the transmission performance is allocated to the primary relay by considering a single relay CCC (SR-CCC) and another separating bandwidth that guarantees the orthogonality from the primary relay is allocated to the secondary relay by considering the inter-relay CCC (IR-CCC). Since the IR-CCC means a degree of similarity between these two relays, it is possible to mitigate the IRI effect within the same bandwidth by allocating orthogonal separating bandwidths to each relay. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the transmission performance by mitigating the IRI effect even in high IRI environments. Consequently, we expect that the proposed scheme can extend the transmission coverage and increase the data rate of the CSS system.
Keywords: chirp spread spectrum; cross-correlation coefficient; inter-relay interference; multiple linear chirp; two-path successive relaying.