A spread spectrum based system technique for synchronization of digital mobile communication systems

A technique is presented that has been verified experimentally to improve the synchronization efficiency of digital communication systems over present systems without sacrificing any reliability. This technique is called the spread-spectrum pilot technique (SSPT). Incorporated into this technique are elements of both tone-calibrated techniques and spread-spectrum systems. In the SSPT system, the desired pilot tone is modulated by a pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) generator of finite duration and then linearly added to the source (customer) date that are actually being sent. At the receiver, the same finite PRBS sequence is used to decode the received signal. The system works because it provides an accurate version of the actual data carrier to be used in demodulation of the received signal. It is strongly believed that this type of system will enable better performance in multipath fading environments that are especially problematic in mobile-radio applications