PN Code Acquisition in DS-CDMA Wireless Systems Using Smart Antenna and S-CFAR Processor

Code division multiple access (CDMA) is a class of techniques allowing multiple users to transmit simultaneously to meet the demand of the recently unprecedented revolution in wireless services. In CDMA systems, a unique pseudo-random (PN) code is assigned to each user to spread the signal at the transmitter side and facilitate signal’s recovery at the receiver side. In particular, a CDMA receiver initially seeks synchronization or acquisition of PN code. This paper focuses on the development and analysis of a new adaptive serial search acquisition method for direct sequence (DS)-CDMA systems in Rayleigh slowly fading channels. The proposed method makes use of smart antenna and switched constant false alarm (S-CFAR) processor for PN code acquisition. The smart antenna and S-CFAR processor are employed to improve the PN acquisition performance by adjusting a decision threshold according to the environment. The performance of proposed acquisition system has been evaluated in terms of probability of false alarm, probability of detection, and mean acquisition time. Closed form expressions for the probability of false alarm and probability of detection have been derived. Further, numerical and simulation results have been presented to show the performance of proposed PN acquisition system in comparison with other existing CFAR-based PN acquisition schemes.