PN Code Acquisition Using Smart Antenna and Adaptive Thresholding CFAR Based on Ordered Data Variability for CDMA Communications

Recently, a novel approach for PN code acquisition of direct sequence code division multipleaccess (DS-CDMA) systems in Rayleigh fading multipath channel was proposed in [1]. The authors considered a combination of adaptive thresholding constant false alarm rate (CFAR) and smart antennas to increase the system capacity and consequently enhance the detection performance. This paper considers still the problem of PN code acquisition for DS-CDMA communication systems over Rayleigh fading channels under the presence of multipath and multiple-access interference (MAI) signals. We propose and analyze an adaptive array acquisition system, which integrates an adaptive thresholding technique based on ordered data variability (ODV) index constant false alarm rate (ODV-CFAR) and digital beamforming where a low complexity least mean square (LMS) algorithm is used to calculate the optimal weighting coefficients. This approach is expected to mitigate interferences caused by the presence of multiple access interference and multipath. Unlike other approaches based on a fixed censoring point when the number of interferences is assumed known, ODV-CFAR processing does not require prior knowledge about the number of interferences. The simulation results show a robust performance of the proposed system in varying mobile communication channels.