Acquisition performance of an ultra wide-band communications system over a multiple-access fading channel

The ultra wide-band time-hopping communications are expected to be a practical scheme in the near future, yet the acquisition analysis of the UWB signals over multipath channels has not been adequately addressed. We propose and analyze a non-consecutive search and global maximum-selection and threshold crossing (MAX/TC) algorithm for the acquisition of a UWB signal over a multiple-access multipath fading channel. The correlator output statistics and the acquisition performance are accurately analyzed, taking into account the effects of multiple interferers, multipath fading, data rate, signal-to-interference-and-noise (SINR) ratio, etc. Some simulation results are presented.