Pipelined software acquisition of WLAN FH sequences

During periods of handoffs in third generation (3G) frequency hopping (FH) macrosystems, acquisition times of the FH codes at the receivers of base stations and users should be minimized. This minimization becomes more crucial in the smaller microsystems, wireless local area networks, and the 4G interconnected macro/microsystems. In this work, a new parallel processing scheme for the initial acquisition of wireless LANs and 4G application FH codes is proposed and analyzed. Frequency estimation of a few consecutive frequency hops triggers a bank of parallel correlators working simultaneously to acquire the timing epoch of the arriving FH sequence. By utilizing a state transition diagram approach, the mean and variance of the acquisition time are evaluated. Preliminary results are presented and discussed, and very short acquisition times are observed.