A new noncoherent nonparametric detector and its application to PN code acquisition in DS/CDMA systems

In this paper we propose to use a nonparametric noncoherent detector for PN code acquisition in DS/CDMA systems. Because this detector is nonparametric, we can decide the threshold of the detector without first having to estimate the variance of time-varying interference. We compare the single-dwell scheme using the proposed detector with that using the conventional detector. From the simulation results, we can observe that the DS/CDMA system with the proposed detector has better performance than that with the conventional detector when the estimation of the interference variance is not possible.