Performance comparison of PN-codes for the acquisition of DS spread spectrum signals

Abstract

In direct sequence (DS) spread spectrum systems, a pseudonoise-(PN-)code must be employed at the transmitter for spreading the spectrum of the information signal. At the receiver the PN-code must be acquired before successful data-demodulation may occur. In this paper, analysis of a serial-search PN-code acquisition technique is carried out using different PN-codes. These codes are: the M-sequence, the Gold code, the concatenated sequence, and the JPL code. The Barker code has been used as a bench-mark for comparison purposes. The mean acqusition time of the acquisition technique has been found as a function of the PN-code autocorrelation function and power spectral density. This allows a valuable performance comparison between different PN-codes when acquired using the same acquisition technique. Moreover, a comparison is performed in the presence of additive white gaussian noise (AWGN) in addition to single-tone interference. A DS serial-search experimental acquisition scheme, supervised by the TMS-3202...