PN Code Tracking Using Noncommensurate Sampling

Abstract

The use of a noninteger symbol to sample time ratio, noncommensurate sampling, in pseudonoise (PN) code-tracking loops is investigated. A noncoherent PN code-tracking loop using noncommensurate sampling and single-bit quantization is presented. An analysis method is developed to characterize the system and determine the steady-state error variance of the timing estimate. The performance of an equivalent analog code-tracking loop is derived and compared with the digital loop to investigate the degradation incurred through sampling and quantization.