A hybrid direct-sequence/frequency-hopping spread-spectrum communication modem for burst format transmission of digital data has been developed. A burst consists of a short synchronisation preamble and the data packet. Data modulation is accomplished by assignment of pairs of pseudonoise sequences with low crosscorrelation for message ones and zeros. The spreading code chip pattern is changed from bit to bit in both the preamble and the message portion of a burst. Receiver signal processing is based on the application of surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) elastic convolvers to programmable matched filtering. The performance of the system in an additive white Gaussian noise channel is analysed, measures of performance being the probability of burst loss and the bit error probability in the case of ideal synchronisation. Evaluations for a particular design are presented, and some experimental results obtained with a test system are shown for comparison.