Propagation delay estimation for DS-CDMA in fading environment based on spatial smoothing

This paper discussed the problem of propagation delay estimation of the received signals in a Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) system operating over fading channels. To that end, an estimator based on subspace identification techniques is proposed. The contribution of our research lies in considering the correlation between different received multipath signals to design an efficient delay estimator by using forward spatial smoothing method. The simulation results confirm the validity of correlation consideration among received multipath signals for boosting the performance of delay estimator.