Noncoherent sequential PN code acquisition using sliding correlation for chip-asynchronous direct-sequence spread-spectrum communications

Noncoherent sequential pseudonoise (PN) code acquisition using sliding correlation is proposed in this paper. Noncoherent detection and chip asynchronization should be taken care of to handle a severely noisy environment, while frequency offset and data modulation effects can be simultaneously dealt with in the proposed technique. To realize sequential detection, the cross-correlation sequences at the output end of the integrate/dump (LID) filter under out-of-lock conditions have to be modeled as either a Gaussian random sequence for chip-asynchronous applications or as their upper bound for chip-synchronous applications in order to avoid significantly high probabilities of false alarm caused by the conventional zero-sequence model. Meanwhile, the in-lock sequence also has to be modified by taking the frequency offset and chip-asynchronization effects into account in order to avoid the occurrence of high probabilities of miss. Extensive computer simulation results indicate that the proposed technique can achieve low probabilities of false alarm and miss and can outperform its fixed-sample-size (FSS) counterparts by roughly 2~4 dB. This superiority, furthermore, increases with decreasing SNRs and/or decreasing desired error probabilities