Correlator code acquisition employing smart antennas in DS/SS systems

This paper compares three code acquisition methods for direct sequence spread spectrum systems with smart antennas. The first method is a known fixed beam strategy where the angular uncertainty region is divided into cells using conventional beamforming techniques. Therein, the receiver searches through all angular and delay cells in serial fashion. In the second method the fixed division is done using advanced beamforming techniques, which provide unproved tolerance against interference. In the third strategy the directions-of-arrivals (DOA) of incoming signals are estimated and utilized in the acquisition process. An advantage of this strategy is the decreased uncertainty region. The acquisition strategies are compared when the serial search acquisition is done using the correlator. The results indicate that the usage of DOA estimation offers the shortest mean acquisition time especially when the number of arriving signals is low.