A comparison of multiple-dwell cell testing strategies in serial search direct sequence spread spectrum code acquisition

Analysis and comparison of three different cell testing methods for direct sequence spread spectrum code acquisition under adverse noise conditions indicates that adding complexity to the synchronizer does not always lead to faster acquisitions, compared to the time a simple immediate rejection strategy requires. These results are based on calculating the minimum average number of code epochs each strategy requires to synchronize with a likelihood of 90%, over carrier to noise ratio conditions between 0 and -15 dB. While the up-down counter strategy yields the fastest acquisitions, the benefit is small, while the two-step rejection strategy actually performs worse than the immediate rejection standard strategy