Considerations on the performance of serial search pseudo-noise code acquisition with a square-law detector

The performance of multiple-dwell pseudo-noise code acquisition with a square-law detector is considered. The minimum mean acquisition time is obtained by numerical optimization of system parameters of dwell times and thresholds. The results show that designs based on a Gaussian approximation that is commonly used in the performance evaluation may result in a much poorer performance than the optimum one. A comparative study is conducted for acquisition schemes with different number of dwells. Some of the conclusions drawn from our results differ from those reported previously