Low-power design for cell search in W-CDMA

This paper presents a low-power design for cell search in the wideband code-division multiple-access (W-CDMA) system. A low-complexity algorithm is designed to work satisfactorily under large frequency and clock errors. Then, signal bit-widths within the cell search are determined to achieve good performance using as few bits as possible. Furthermore, a set of low-power measures is employed in the design of hardware architecture and circuits. Critical blocks on power consumption are further identified and redesigned to reduce power. The final design consumes only half the power of the original one.