Serial acquisition techniques for DS-CDMA signals in frequency-selective multi-user mobile channels

This paper compares the mean acquisition time performance of two serial search acquisition schemes over frequency-selective multipath Rayleigh fading channels. Both the conventional cell-by-cell detection and the novel joint twin-cell detection are characterised. In contrast to the majority of published results considering only one correct timing state (Hi cell) in the uncertainty region of the pseudo noise (PN) sequence, this paper aims to analyse the mean acquisition time performance of a serial search so acquisition scheme considering multiple timing states in the uncertainty region. The mean acquisition time performance comparison between the conventional cell-by-cell detection and the joint twin-cell detection shows that the latter can achieve significantly improved acquisition time performance at almost the same complexity.