Use of multiple antennas for DS/CDMA code acquisition

A generalized acquisition scheme is proposed for direct sequence code-division multiple-access systems with multiple antennas. The proposed scheme employs grouping of multiple antennas as a means of a tradeoff between two important factors determining the mean acquisition time, combining gain and search time. The performance of the proposed acquisition scheme is analyzed in frequency-selective Rayleigh-fading channels with consideration of spatial correlations. Numerical results show that the use of the largest number of antenna groups is preferable to reducing the mean acquisition time at low signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) values. At high SIR values, on the contrary, the mean acquisition time is found to increase in proportion to the number of antenna groups. In a typical environment, the presence of spatial correlation is shown to increase or decrease the mean acquisition time within 50% compared with the uncorrelated fading case.