PN code acquisition using signed-rank-based nonparametric detectors in DS/SS systems

In this paper, signed-rank based nonparametric detectors are used for pseudonoise (PN) code acquisition in direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DS/SS) systems. We first derive the locally optimum rank (LOR) detector and then propose the locally suboptimum rank (LSR) and modified signed-rank (MSR) detectors using approximate score functions. We compare the single-dwell scheme without the verification mode using the proposed LSR and MSR detectors with that using the conventional squared-sum (SS) and modified sign (MS) detectors. From the simulation results, it is shown that the proposed LSR and MSR detectors perform better than the MS detector by about 2-3 dB and are nearly optimum.