PN code acquisition using smart antenna for spread-spectrum wireless communications. I

The smart antenna (a blind adaptive antenna array) has brought much attention to its ability to improve the future code-division multiple-access (CDMA) wireless communications systems. However, Adachi et al. (1998), employed only one out of M elements that are in a smart antenna array during the pseudonoise (PN) code acquisition process due to the difficulty in obtaining the weight coefficients of the smart antenna and PN code acquisition jointly and adaptively. Yet, as the PN code is acquired, all M elements are used by Adachi et al. to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at a reverse link. We propose an efficient PN code acquisition scheme where all elements are employed during PN code acquisition. Also, we show that by using all elements, the PN code acquisition time can be shortened by at least 40% for a given signal-to-noise ratio and M=5, compared to the single element case. Furthermore, the power of a random access user signal in the reverse link can be lowered at least 3 dB. The additional computational load and complexity to use the proposed PN code acquisition are insignificant.