  We show that to lower the sampling rate in a spread spectrum communication
system using Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), compressive signal
processing can be applied to demodulate the received signal. This may lead to a
decrease in the power consumption or the manufacturing price of wireless
receivers using spread spectrum technology. The main novelty of this paper is
the discovery that in spread spectrum systems it is possible to apply
compressive sensing with a much simpler hardware architecture than in other
systems, making the implementation both simpler and more energy efficient. Our
theoretical work is exemplified with a numerical experiment using the IEEE
802.15.4 standard's 2.4 GHz band specification. The numerical results support
our theoretical findings and indicate that compressive sensing may be used
successfully in spread spectrum communication systems. The results obtained
here may also be applicable in other spread spectrum technologies, such as Code
Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems.
