Differentially coherent PN code acquisition based on a matched filter for chip-asynchronous DS/SS communications

A pseudonoise code acquisition technique based on a matched filter with differentially coherent detection is proposed for direct-sequence spread-spectrum communications in chip-asynchronous environments. Such a technique can be confidently exploited as an alternative to noncoherent detectors, which have been extensively investigated, because it can provide very attractive improvements over its noncoherent counterpart as well as overcome the problems caused by chip asynchronization without increasing hardware complexity. The results of statistical analyses show that the proposed technique certainly can achieve much lower error probabilities.