An expanding-search algorithm for coarse acquisition of DSSS signals

For coarse acquisition of direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) signals, a search of the possible code phases is required. When a priori information is available, such as signal reacquisition, the serial search may be abandoned in favor of an expanding search. In this paper, an expanding-search algorithm is presented and compared to the expanding-sweep algorithms which have been treated in the literature. Performance results for the serial-search and expanding-search algorithms are given