Forward link acquisition performance in CDMA mobile communications

The paper derives the performance of a direct sequence spread spectrum acquisition scheme. The effect of multiple access interference on acquisition performance is determined. The analysis presented is applicable to the forward link (base station to mobile) of a mobile communications system which employs code division multiple access (CDMA). A non-coherent receiver and a parallel search strategy are utilized. The results are derived for both long and short spreading sequences in order to show that the periodicity of the spreading sequences has a significant effect on acquisition performance. Furthermore, the results show that the reverse link has better acquisition performance than the forward link