IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 49, NO.
5, MAY 2001
Code Timing Acquisition for DS-CDMA in Fading
Channels by Differential Correlations
Tapani Ristaniemi, Member, IEEE, and Jyrki Joutsensalo, Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this paper, we propose simple and efficient
algorithms for the code timing acquisition in the direct-sequence
code-division multiple-access communication system. The es-
sential assumption is that a preamble or an unmodulated pilot
channel is available for the desired user. Then the correlation
R
matrix ( ) of the sampled data, where  is suitably chosen
time lag, contains the timing information only of desired user,
while the contributions of uncorrelated interferers and noise
are suppressed out. Hence, compared to the conventional ap-
proach, more interference suppression is achieved. Coarse delay
estimates are then obtained by matched filter (MF) or multiple
signal classification-type approaches. In the latter case, only L
eigenvectors are computed, where L is the number of resolvable
paths. If only one path exists, an additional procedure is proposed
to both approaches, by which the estimation accuracy is greatly
improved with negligible increase in computation. More precisely,
the chip timing offset due to chip-asynchronous sampling can be
determined by solving a system of two second-order polynomials
for each chip interval. Therefore, only at most 2C hypotheses are
needed, where C is the processing gain.
All the proposed methods are computationally quite simple, con-
taining mainly MF-operations, or at most computation of only few
eigenvectors. Mean acquisition time analysis is carried out semi-
analytically. Numerical experiments speaks for the possibility of
achieving significant performance gains compared to conventional
acquisition, especially in the presence of strong multiple-access in-
terference, making them attractive options to be attached for the
next generation mobile receivers.
Index Terms—Code acquisition, code-division multiple access,
differential correlation.
I. INTRODUCTION
W IDE-BAND code-division multiple-access (WCDMA
or CDMA) technology is a strong candidate for future
global wireless mobile communications. WCDMA [1] has been
selected as an air interface solution, e.g., in UMTS (Universal
Mobile Telecommunication System) standard, which will
Paper approved by R. Kohno, the Editor for Spread-Spectrum Theory and
Applications of the IEEE Communications Society. Manuscript received March
30, 1999; revised November 25, 1999 and July 20, 2000. The work of T. Ris-
taniemi was supported by the Academy of Finland. This paper was presented
in part at the Second IEEE Signal Processing Workshop on Signal Processing
Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC), Annapolis, MD, May 1999,
the 1999 International Workshop on Mobile Communications (IWMC), Chania,
Greece, June 1999, the Sixth IEEE International Conference on Electronics,
Circuits, and System (ICECS), Paphos, Cyprus, September 1999, and the 50th
IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC-Fall), Amsterdam, The Nether-
lands, September 1999.
The authors are with the Department of Mathematical Information Tech-
nology, University of Jyväskylä, FIN-40351 Jyväskylä, Finland (e-mail:
riesta@mit.jyu.fi; jyrkij@mit.jyu.fi).
Publisher Item Identifier S 0090-6778(01)04088-0.
0090–6778/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE
899
provide a multitude of services, especially multimedia and high
bit rate packet data.
CDMA is based on spread-spectrum technique, where
the idea is to spread the narrow-band information signal
into a common wide frequency band before transmission. In
direct-sequence (DS) CDMA, the spreading is performed by
wide-band noise-like signal, which simultaneously identifies
each user in the system. This pseudonoise is also called the
code or the chip sequence of a particular user.
The final objective in the reception of a DS-CDMA system is
to estimate the symbols which carry the data, but a prerequisite
task is to get the local code generator synchronized to that of
received signal. This means estimation of the propagation delay,
which gives the required knowledge to the receiver about the
phase of the spreading code. In addition, the strengths of possible
multipaths and carrier phase must be estimated. In this paper,
we consider only code timing estimation, because it tends to be
the most challenging task, and because the other parameters can
be estimated given a reliable delay estimate [2], [3].
Conventional CDMA systems rely on single-user techniques,
such as matched filter (MF) [4], in both delay estimation and
detection. Although simple, they are inadequate if the code or-
thogonality conditions are perturbed. This happens even in syn-
chronous system with orthogonal codes due to the existence of
multipaths with different delays. Moreover, if the desired signal
is much weaker than the interfering signals, which is commonly
known as a near–far problem, single-user techniques can totally
collapse. In the uplink (e.g., mobile to base) communication,
near–far problem can be mitigated by power control, but if used
in downlink (e.g., base to mobile) communications, it actually
causes near–far effect for the downlink receiver. (This is the
case, e.g., in the WCDMA concept, where equal performance is
offered to each mobile user, regardless of their locations.) The
work of Verdú [5] meant, however, that it is possible to eliminate
the effects of multiple-access interference (MAI) and near–far
problem. This optimum multiuser detector, although computa-
tionally demanding and requires all the system parameters to be
known, initiated the development of lower complexity near–far
resistant techniques for both detection [6], [7] and delay/channel
estimation [8], [9].
Code timing acquisition refers to coarse delay estimation,
where the maximal acceptable error is half a chip duration. In [8]
and [9] a subspace approach was considered, which was based
on multiple signal classification (MUSIC) [10]. However, their
performance is found to be inadequate in highly loaded systems
[11], when the signal might not have subspace structure any-
more. Since acquisition takes place before actual data detection,
training symbols or preamble can be used. This was utilized
900 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 49, NO. 5, MAY 2001

in [11] and [12]. Both maximum-likelihood-based algorithms

modeled the training symbols as desired signal and all the in-
terference as colored non-Gaussian noise that is uncorrelated
with the desired signal. The algorithm in [11] was found to be
near–far resistant and tolerate high system loading. In addition,
the accuracy of the delay estimate was achieved by solving a
second-order polynomial for each chip interval. A major limita-
tion, however, is that the method cannot be extended to fading
channels. This is mainly because of the need of long training pe-
riod, during which the channel may have a (sample) mean too
close to zero. This disadvantage was removed by receiver di-
versity in [13], which allowed shorter training. The algorithm Fig. 1. Channel model (L = 3 paths). x(t) is the data to be sent, z stands
in [12] also has limitations in extension to the fading channels, for delaying by d chips, and a (t) denotes path i attenuation in time.
and moreover looses its near–far resistance in highly loaded sys-
tems. The computational complexity of all those algorithms is methods we use conventional noncoherent and coherent MF.
also still quite high from the downlink signal processing point of Comparisons are also made with the recently reported con-
view. Most promising performance with low computation was strained minimum output energy-based algorithm [17], and
found in [14], where the effects of interference were suppressed subspace-based MUSIC.
by correlating the MF output with a delayed version of it. The The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II con-
idea behind differential correlation is the following: when only tains problem formulation. In Section III, differential correla-
1’s are sent to desired user, its contribution in the received tions based algorithms for delay estimation are derived. Sec-
signal at the symbol level is only the fading process, whose tion IV contains mean acquisition time analysis and numerical
time-correlatedness can be exploited. Basically the same idea experiments, and conclusions are collected in the last section.
was exploited also in [15], with the exception that the differen-
tial correlation was performed prior to matched filtering. This II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
was due to the special shift-and-add-property of -sequences,
A. Notations
which makes the proposed algorithm sensitive to the choice of
spreading code. Throughout the paper, lower and uppercase boldface letters
In this paper, we adopt the same spirit as in [14], although the denote vectors and matrices, respectively. In addition, we denote
derivation of the algorithm is different. This is mainly because the following:
we assume periodic (or “short”) spreading codes, and analyze complex conjugate;
the properties of the correlation matrix of the received and sam- transpose, and Hermitian transpose;
pled data with nonzero time lags. In short, we call it a differ- expected value;
ential correlation matrix. In addition, two extensions are made. sign-function;
First, the assumption of periodic codes makes it possible to con- th vector;
sider also eigenvalue-based approaches. We do this by applying Frobenius norm;
MUSIC [10], which has also earlier been applied to CDMA syn- matrices with all entries 0 and 1, respectively.
chronization in [8] and [9]. In those papers, however, MUSIC
was applied to the data correlation matrix with zero time lag, and B. Signal Model
problems arose in high system loads due to the disappearance of The signal model studied in this paper is a baseband down-
signal subspace structure. In the context of this paper it is rea- link model with a fading multipath channel, and additive white
sonable to apply MUSIC even in highly loaded systems, because Gaussian noise. The channel model is depicted in Fig. 1. The
differential correlations effectively filters interference prior to base station sends a signal
actual delay estimation. Therefore, the signal subspace dimen- , which contains the information of symbols of users.
sion is significantly reduced while still preserving the desired Here is th user’s th symbol, is th user’s chip se-
information, making the circumstances favorable for MUSIC. quence. ,
Second, we assume arbitrary delays, and propose a simple way where is the symbol duration. We assume that the channel is
to accurately estimate the chip timing offset in single-path case. fixed during one symbol, i.e.,
This is an important task since the estimation errors in chip tim- in Fig. 1. is called an attenuation factor of the th path, which
ings may cause serious performance losses in symbol estimation is a complex number and may vary from symbol to symbol. The
[16]. In this paper we show that differential correlations enable received signal hence has the form
determining the fractional part of the delay by solving a system
of two second-order polynomials for each chip interval.
(1)
Numerical simulations with DS-CDMA downlink data
are included in the paper, as a goal to estimate the delays
of a desired user in the system. These values are then used where is the number of resolvable paths, is the chip dura-
as input parameters for the mean acquisition time analysis, tion, and is the delay of the th path, where
which is hence carried out semianalytically. As main reference with integer and . The delay of each path is
RISTANIEMI AND JOUTSENSALO: CODE TIMING ACQUISITION FOR DS-CDMA IN FADING CHANNELS 901

assumed to remain roughly constant in the observation interval. 4) Fading process of each path is stationary. Therefore,
denotes noise, and the chip sequence length (i.e., pro- the correlation coefficient equals
cessing gain) is . From now on, we assume
for simplicity.
First, the received data is sampled by chip-matched filtering,
and the equispaced samples are collected into -vectors where , and .
5) Noise is a random zero mean variable, and independent
(2) with the data and fading. Then
, where and are those of (11).
They have a well-known form (e.g., [8]) Notice that assumption 1) can also be replaced by assuming
that there exists a common unmodulated pilot channel. Notice
(3) also that assumptions 3) and 4), without zero-mean assumption,
are equivalent to the common uncorrelated scatterer (US) model
where denotes noise vector, and [4], and wide-sense stationary (WSS) model [18], respectively.
It should be noted, however, that assumption 3) is not necessary
(4) for the purposes of the paper, but it is made to achieve a simple
(5) and elegant representation of . The case where 3) do not
apply is discussed in Remark 1.
Here the “early” and “late” parts of the code vectors are According to (11), and assumption 5), the differential corre-
lation matrix now is
(6)
(7)
Notice that (4) and (5) and (6) and (7) are due to the chip and
(12)
symbol asynchronous sampling, respectively. To get a more
compact representation of the data, let us define a where the dimensional matrix is defined as
dimensional code matrix
(13)
(8)
According to (10), the matrix contains subma-
and a -vector trices of dimension . Denote these by , i.e.,

(9) (14)
Stacking all the vectors into a -vector Denote the element of a matrix. From (9) we directly
have
(10)
the sample vector (3) can be rewritten as
(11)
Here depends on the codes and the delays, and depends
on the channel coefficients and the symbols.

III. SYNCHRONIZATION ALGORITHMS

Our goal is to compute the correlation matrix of the (15)
sampled data (11), where the time lag equals symbols. Since fading and symbol processes are independent, we have
In short, we call a differential—instead of autocorrelation moreover
matrix to stress the nonzero time lag. The proposed methods are
based on the observation that contains timing information
only of the desired user, which is first shown. The following
realistic assumptions are made.
1) A constant preamble (“all
ones”) is available for the desired user, which is the
user from now on.
2) Symbols of interfering users are uncorrelated
random binary variables of zero mean. Then
, and for . (16)
3) Fading processes of each path are uncorrelated and Next we show that almost all matrices are equal
have a zero mean. Then for . to , provided the time difference is equal to symbols or
902 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 49, NO. 5, MAY 2001

more. The reason why is not a good choice for the time the zero submatrices were always due to the uncorrelatedness
lag is discussed in Remark 2. and the zero-mean properties of the interfering user’s symbols.
Case 1) . Now all the symbols are equal to Therefore, is free of contributions of interfering users even
1, and depends only on the channel without assumption 3), although the form of is a little bit
coefficients. With we have different. This is because in “Case 1”, both subcases “ ”,
due to assumption 3). On the other hand, with , and “ ” cause nonzero submatrices. Assumption 3) is valid,
we have e.g., for Rayleigh-fading channels [4], but do not apply, e.g., for
Rician fading [4] and fixed multipath channels. In the former
(17) case, not all the paths have a zero mean. However, we still have
for , since only one path has a nonzero
due to assumption 4). mean. In the latter case, all the paths are correlated and have a
Case 2) . Now depends on nonzero mean.
the channel coefficients and the symbols of Remark 2: It is important to notice that the situation
user . Since these symbols are zero mean, is not as desired as the case symbols. The reason is as
for all . follows: due to symbol asynchronous sampling, the sample vec-
Case 3) . In this case, we always have tors usually contain information about two successive sym-
due to assumption 2). bols [see (3)]. Therefore, with the time lag symbol, two
Hence, the matrix contains only nonzero submatrices successive sample vectors also have some degree of correlation
of , and they correspond to the situations where with respect to the interfering users. To see this in details, let
and . Due to the definition (10), these submatrices are , and consider . If now with
situated in the main diagonal of . Therefore, (12) reduces , which belongs to “Case 3” above, we would have a
to nonzero submatrix equal to

.. (21)
.
If is now rewritten in the form of (19), would clearly
have a contribution which corresponds to the interfering user
(18) . For this reason, we only consider cases where
from which we see that depends only on first rows of symbols.
the codematrix . Since these rows correspond to the desired Remark 3: It is worth mentioning that the differential cor-
user only [see (8)], the contribution of interference is sup- relation matrix with contains two kinds of infor-
pressed from . To express in detail the form of , we mation about the channel: the average power of the paths, and
make a mild assumption that , the rapidity of their fading process. The latter is related to the
and denote it . This means that the fading process has correlation coefficient , which is closer to (respectively,
almost the same degree of correlation whether the time dif- 1) the faster (respectively, slower) is the fading process. There-
ference is or symbols. Then, (17) reduces to fore, provided equal energy paths, the slowly varying paths are
, and consequently (see details in Ap- the best represented in . This is a nice property, because
pendix A) such paths are more valuable to be acquired due to their easier
tracking.
.. In practice is estimated by
.
(22)

However, strong time correlations could take place with much

(19) larger time intervals than symbols. Thus, simple averaging
over many ’s, would make even more inter-
where ference suppression, and consequently offer better accuracy. If
this type of coherent integration is considered, the estimation of
(20) a more general differential correlation matrix would be

From the structure of we see explicitly that it contains the

code and delay information of the desired user only.
Remark 1: The reason for assumption 3) was to achieve a
compact representation (19). However, to ensure that the differ-
ential correlation matrix , with symbols, contains
only the desired user’s information, assumption 3) is not neces-
sary. This is because the contribution of interfering users are got
only via “Case 2” and “Case 3” above. However, in these cases,
(23)
where , and is the duration of the data block and co-
herent integration (in symbols), respectively.
In the following we construct the delay estimators based on
differential correlation. While doing that, no coherent integra-
tion is assumed to simplify notations.
RISTANIEMI AND JOUTSENSALO: CODE TIMING ACQUISITION FOR DS-CDMA IN FADING CHANNELS 903

Here is a diagonal matrix, whose diagonal elements are

nonzero eigenvalues of , and is a dimensional
matrix, containing the related eigenvectors on its columns. But
then MUSIC [10] could be used to estimate the delays. Due to
finite number of samples, will be in practice asymmetric,
and it must be first symmetrized to achieve real eigenvalues
and orthonormal eigenvectors. Therefore, we define symmetric
, for which MUSIC is applied. More
precisely, the delay estimation is performed as

(29)

where consists of principal eigenvectors of .

We label this estimator as DC-MUSIC (differential correlations-
Fig. 2. Conventional noncoherent MF and DC-MF. The decision is performed
based MUSIC).
by a threshold element, after cumulating the information from a predetermined MUSIC has been applied to CDMA chip timing acquisi-
number of data vectors. T is a symbol duration. tion also earlier in [8] and [9], but it should be stressed that
DC-MUSIC is totally different from those. The difference
A. MF-Type Approach between traditional MUSIC and DC-MUSIC arise from the
development of the autocorrelation matrix, whose principal
The simplest way to estimate the delay is to try and match the eigenvectors are computed. In traditional MUSIC, a matrix
known code to the data as well as possible. That is, to find the is computed, i.e., the time lag for the data is zero.
solution for As was seen earlier, has a signal subspace of dimension
. Considering the data model (3), can be as high
(24)
as due to multipath fading, and even in nonfading
Here is a replica of the user’s code, corresponding case is still as large as . In a highly loaded system,
to the fractional test delay . Formally, if we first define when does not obey subspace structure anymore,
a cyclic shift of the chip sequence as and this causes the failure of MUSIC. In DC-MUSIC, on the
other hand, the first thing to do is to filter the interference and
(25) noise out as much as possible by differential correlations, i.e.,
by estimating instead of . In theory, is of rank
then we may write as
, which is a big enough rank reduction to make circumstances
favorable for MUSIC. Equally important, the rank is reduced
(26)
while still preserving the desired information. In practice, as the
The delay estimator (24), which we label DC-MF (Differen- interference cannot be suppressed totally due to a finite number
tial Correlations based MF), was the main contribution of our of vector samples, principal eigenvectors of symmetrized
earlier work [19]. Notice that as “all ones” preamble is used, the are estimated, after which MUSIC is applied.
conventional noncoherent MF is exactly DC-MF with . It
is also worth noticing that, since (24) equals C. Timing-Offset Estimation
Up to this point we have considered only the coarse delay
estimation by fractional test delays, which is clearly enough to
(27)
achieve an estimation error less than half of a chip duration. The
accuracy of the estimate can then be achieved in the tracking
DC-MF includes, indeed, only MF-operations. Moreover, it mode. Of course, accuracy could also be achieved by using
tells that DC-MF is applicable also in the system with aperiodic smaller step sizes for the test delays. However, differential cor-
(long) codes, since only the MF outputs are needed. Estimator relations enable actual solving of the fractional part of the delay.
of form (27) would be the practical implementation of DC-MF, Namely, we show in the following that in a frequency-flat fading
and is depicted in Fig. 2. channel it is enough to solve a system of two second-order poly-
nomials for each chip interval.
B. MUSIC-Type Approach Assume only one resolvable path exists. Suppose is
In practice, the estimate will always contain some con- the propagation delay, so that the differential correlation ma-
tributions of interfering users and noise due to the finite length of trix becomes , where we have denoted
the preamble. But if would have exactly the form of (12), [see (19)]. Recall that
or equally (19), it could be rewritten by eigenvalue decomposi- by (20). According to (4) and (5), we have moreover
tion as , where and are
defined in (25), being just a and times shifted replicas
(28) of the desired chip sequence, respectively. Suppose now that we
904 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 49, NO. 5, MAY 2001

use the test codes exactly and . This is because TABLE I

the true delay lies between and . Considering the MF-type ALGORITHMS ADC-MF AND ADC-MUSIC FOR TIMING OFFSET ESTIMATION
approach, we immediately have (see details in Appendix B)

(30)

where . Notice that these quantities

are known, since they are (up to scaling) just values of the code
autocorrelation function with time lag chips. For example, for
-sequences , and . Hence, only two
unknowns, and are included in (30). The solutions for
can be found (see details in Appendix C) to be equal to

(31)

where

(32)

We can also rewrite (32) as

(33)

which is more a suitable expression in the case of aperiodic

codes. Equation (31), which we label ADC-MF (accurate
DC-MF), is a closed-form expression for the timing offset ,
for which we need only the information about the hypotheses
and . ADC-MF is summarized in Table I.
Also the MUSIC-type approach could be used. This is be-
cause has only one nonzero eigenvalue,
and the related eigenvector is . Replacing by
in (30), we would have

Letting now , (30) would accordingly have more of a

general form
(34)

Since is unknown, as being a function of , we end up

with (31) and (32). Naturally, is replaced by
in (32). Analogously, we label this approach as ADC-MUSIC
(accurate DC-MUSIC), and summarize it also in Table I.
Remark 4: A slightly modyfied version of (31) could also be
used in case of multipaths. This is because

i.e.

Assuming impulse-like code autocorrelation, i.e., for

, we would end up with (30), where in addition .
This would accordingly lead to an estimator

(36)
(35)
RISTANIEMI AND JOUTSENSALO: CODE TIMING ACQUISITION FOR DS-CDMA IN FADING CHANNELS 905

Fig. 3. Code acquisition process.

IV. ANALYSIS
A. Performance Measures
In this paper, we consider delay estimation only in a parallel
manner. This is because the goal is to compare the performance
of the methods without considering any threshold setting. Max-
imum selection is used to determine the delay, i.e., the strongest
peak from the delay spectrum is selected. The definition of ac-
quisition is the case where any multipath component is found.
The performance measure, probability of acquisition, is defined
M
Fig. 4. Typical fading process. The lines indicates the real and imaginary parts
as of the time-varying path attenuation factor for = 500 symbols.

# of acquisitions
(37)
# of trials
The other performance measure is mean acquisition time,
which measures the average time spent in the acquisition
process. This issue is profoundly considered in [20]. The
acquisition scheme is illustrated in Fig. 3. A preamble of
symbols is sent, which is processed in the receiver’s acquisition
mode. In case of misacquisition, a request for the new preamble
is sent, which takes a time of symbols.
Suppose a while that it takes no time to request a new pre-
amble, i.e., . Then the average time needed for acquisi-
tion is
The third performance measure is root mean-square error
(RMSE). It measures the accuracy of the delay estimation
according to
(41)
where is the true delay, and is the number of realizations.
If the delay estimations are unbiased, the RMSE values can be
directly compared to the Cramer–Rao bound (CRB). CRB is the
lower bound for the variance of any unbiased estimator. The an-
alytical forms of CRBs in different type of channels are derived,
e.g., in [9], [11], and [16].

(38)
In practice, however, , since each misacquisition pays
an additional price of symbols by which a new preamble is
requsted. This additional time is on average
(39)
The mean acquisition time is thus
(40)
B. Numerical Experiments
We compare the methods in the downlink environment with
the Rayleigh fading channel. The data rate is assumed to be
kbit/s, carrier frequency GHz, and mobile speed
km/h. This results in normalized Doppler shifts at most
. According to Jakes’ doppler
power spectrum [18], and related autocorrelation function of the
channel, the coherent integration interval of symbols
is reasonable, and is used from now on unless otherwise stated.
The typical fading process at the symbol level is seen in Fig. 4.
The methods for delay estimation are: DC-MF (24),
DC-MUSIC (29), ADC-MF and ADC-MUSIC (Table I),
MUSIC [9], CMOE [17], and conventional noncoherent and
coherent MF [4]. Any parameters such as time-varying path
strengths, and codes of the interfering users are not assumed
to be known. Only the code of the desired user is known. In
addition, a preamble is available for the desired user
. Gold codes of length are used. Signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) in the chip-MF output is always 10 dB. Both
frequency-selective and flat fading channels are considered. In
frequency-selective fading channels the number of resolvable
paths is either or . The number of users is varied
from to . Therefore, the total number of sources
906
Fig. 5. Probability of acquisition as a function of the number of users in an
M
equal energy two-path Rayleigh fading channel. All the interfering users are
10 dB stronger. The length of the preamble is = 400, and the average SNR
is 10 dB.
Fig. 6. Mean acquisition time as a function of the number of users in an equal
stronger. The length of the preamble is M
energy two-path Rayleigh fading channel. All the interfering users are 10 dB
= 400, and the average SNR is
10 dB.
is , while the maximum signal subspace
dimension is . Therefore, highly loaded systems arise.
In one simulation, each parameter value is fixed, and the delays
are estimated from the peaks of the delay spectra. All the
measured quantities are averaged over 1000 simulations.
1) Setup A: Varying System Load: The channel has two
equal energy paths, and all the interfering users are
10 dB stronger. Maximum selection is used to find any multipath
component. The probabilities of acquisition are measured as a
function of the number of users . Fig. 5 shows
the performance with varying system load, when the length of
the preamble is . Noncoherent MF predictably fails
due the strong MAI, as well as MUSIC due to the high system
loading. On the other hand, CMOE would need more an accu-
rate estimate for the inverse of the autocorrelation matrix. The
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 49, NO. 5, MAY 2001
Fig. 7. Probability of acquisition as a function of MAI in an equal energy
K= 10 users. The
two-path Rayleigh fading channel. The system included
length of the preamble isM = 400, and the average SNR is 10 dB.
Fig. 8. Mean acquisition time as a function of MAI in an equal energy two-path
K
Rayleigh fading channel. The system included = 10 users. The length of the
preamble is M = 400, and the average SNR is 10 dB.
remaining methods have nearly equal performance when only a
few users occupy the system, but the methods based on differ-
ential correlations are clearly the most tolerant against system
loading. Quite remarkably, DC-MF reaches a probability of ac-
quisition as high as 0.963, even though all the 14 interfering
users (i.e., the case ) are 10 dB stronger. Fig. 6 shows
the corresponding mean acquisition times.
One can notice that DC-MF seems to have better acquisi-
tion capability than DC-MUSIC. The reason for this is that the
MF-type approach in general works well as the code autocor-
relation function is impulse-like. With shorter codes, the code
autocorrelation function gets worse, and the use of DC-MUSIC
is more reasonable. This is demonstrated later in Setup D.
2) Setup B: Varying Level of MAI: In this experiment we
study the effect of increasing the level of MAI. The system in-
cludes users in an equal energy two-path Rayleigh
RISTANIEMI AND JOUTSENSALO: CODE TIMING ACQUISITION FOR DS-CDMA IN FADING CHANNELS
Fig. 9. Probability of acquisition as a function of the preamble length in an
equal energy two-path Rayleigh fading channel. The system included K = 10
users, and all the interfering users are 10 dB stronger. The average SNR is 10 dB.
Fig. 10. Mean acquisition time as a function of the preamble length in an equal
energy two-path Rayleigh fading channel. The system included K = 10 users,
and all the interfering users are 10 dB stronger. The average SNR is 10 dB.
fading channel. The length of the preamble is , and
the average SNR is 10 dB.
Fig. 7 shows the achieved probabilities of acquisition as a
function of MAI per interfering user. One can see that real dif-
ferences are noticed after MAI of 8 dB, after which DC-MF is
able to retain the performance the best. With MAI of 12 dB per
interfering user, DC-MF still gives a probability of acquisition
equal to 0.915, while coherent MF drops down to 0.608. Fig. 8
shows the corresponding mean acquisition times.
3) Setup C: Varying Number of Symbols: In this experiment
we study the effect of increasing the length of the preamble.
The system includes users and all the interfering users
are 10 dB stronger. The achieved probabilities of acquisition are
seen in Fig. 9. Again, noncoherent MF fails in the near–far sce-
nario, which is predictable, as well as MUSIC due to the high
system load. CMOE usually performs better as more symbols
907
Fig. 11. Relative number of acquired paths in L = 3 path Rayleigh fading
channel as a function of the preamble length. The system included K = 2
users, and the random codes were of length C = 7. Average SNR was 10 dB.
TABLE II
NUMBER OF CASES A CERTAIN PATH IS ACQUIRED IN A K = 2 USER SYSTEM
WITH RANDOM CODES OF LENGTH C = 7. PREAMBLE LENGTH IS M = 500
SYMBOLS, AND AVERAGE SNR IS 10 dB. FRACTIONAL PARTS  ; i = 1; 2; 3;
ARE UNIFORMLY DISTRIBUTED OVER (0; 1)
are available [17]. This is because the estimation for the inverse
of the autocorrelation matrix thus becomes more accurate.
However, in this setup the strong MAI is too much for CMOE,
even if as many as symbols are available. The fact
that the proposed methods are asymptotically invariant with re-
spect to the interfering users and noise can be predicted from
the figure, in which the probability of acquisition seems to tend
to 1. The figure also tells the fact that the performance of the
proposed methods depends essentially on the length of the pre-
amble, because the goal is to “average interference out.” For this
reason, it is understandable that the methods fail if the preamble
is too short. However, this is also the problem for the reference
methods, which may suffer even more.
In Fig. 10 the mean acquisition times in symbols are plotted.
Due to reliable estimations, the acquisition time for DC-MF is
usually no more than the length of the preamble.
4) Setup D: Search of Multiple Paths: In this experiment we
demonstrate the ability of DC-MUSIC to find the most paths.
users are given random codes of length in
path Rayleigh fading channel. The paths have 5 dB differences
in power. Fig. 11 shows the average amount of acquired paths
as a function of the preamble length. It is seen that DC-MUSIC
always found the most paths. Quite remarkably, DC-MUSIC
908
M K
Fig. 12. RMSE (chips) as a function of number of users in a single-path
Rayleigh fading channel. The length of the preamble is = 500 symbols,
and the average SNR is 10 dB.
found average nearly 2.5 paths out of 3, as sym-
bols are available. Table II shows the case in more
detail. Namely, it tells the number of cases when each path
is acquired. It is quite noticeable how frequently DC-MUSIC
acquired also the weaker paths ( 5- and 10-dB paths with
probabilities 0.882 and 0.640, respectively) compared to the
other methods, which had serious problems in acquiring even
the second strongest path.
5) Setup E: Single-Path Channel: In the first experiment,
we study the achieved accuracy in a system with
users. Now, all the users are equally strong. The channel is fre-
quency-flat fading, and ADC-MF and ADC-MUSIC are applied
for the first time. The accuracy for all the other methods are
achieved by using more delay candidates. More precisely, the
increment for the delay candidate was always as small as
chip. Recall that ADC-MF and ADC-MUSIC uses an increment
equal to one chip, only.
Fig. 12 shows the achieved accuracies in RMSE. CMOE
seems also to yield quite accurate estimates, and performs
better than the proposed methods, when the system load is
low. However, it must be pointed out that there is no MAI in
this experiment. Hence, it is expected that in the presence of
MAI, the RMSE of CMOE will degrade significantly, as can
be seen from Setup B. Also MUSIC performs better than the
proposed ones, but only when the system load is low. Coherent
MF seems to perform nearly the same as the proposed methods.
However, we must stress that both ADC-MF and ADC-MUSIC
actually solves the fractional part of the propagation delay
from two successive outputs of the differential correlator, thus
needing much less computation than the reference methods.
The negligible difference of ADC-MF and ADC-MUSIC is
also understandable, since differential correlations effectively
filters the interference, giving thus not much possibilities for
MUSIC to improve the accuracy any more.
The second experiment is dedicated for the comparison of
the accuracy of ADC-MF and ADC-MUSIC to the Cramer–Rao
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 49, NO. 5, MAY 2001
Fig. 13. RMSE as a function of preamble length in single-path time-invariant
channel with = 5 users, the average SNR of 0 dB.
lower bound (CRB). Although the estimators turned out to be
approximately unbiased, the bias is estimated for each fixed pa-
rameter value. This is taken into account in the final RMSE cal-
culation, giving an adequate measure for the CRB comparison.
The system includes users, and the average SNR is 0 dB.
The single-path time-invariant channel is assumed, and hence
the data model coincides with that of [11, pp. 88–89], where the
CRB is derived. The RMSE curves are seen in Fig. 13, from
which we notice that neither methods attain the CRB. This was
also the case in [9] with MUSIC. One can also see that the co-
herent integration improves the accuracy of ADC-MF to that of
ADC-MUSIC.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, simple and accurate code timing acquisition
in DS-CDMA system was studied. It was shown that when a
constant preamble or an unmodulated pilot channel is available
for the desired user, the receiver can efficiently filter noise and
interferers out by differential correlations and suitably chosen
time lags. Therefore, it is possible to estimate the desired user’s
delays even when huge number of interferers exist. Two types
of methods were proposed, labeled as (A)DC-MF and (A)DC-
MUSIC, whose main characteristics were as follows:
• they are computationally simple, containing only MF-op-
erations (DC-MF) or at most computation of few, say
, eigenvectors (DC-MUSIC);
• they efficiently filter interfering users and additive noise
out prior to actual delay estimation, regardless of the code
nonorthogonalities due to multipath propagation;
• they can effectively utilize the time correlation of the
fading process;
• DC-MF performs equally or better than conventional ap-
proach, though they are computationally equally simple;
• DC-MUSIC is suitable especially for the acquisition of
many, possibly less powerful paths;
RISTANIEMI AND JOUTSENSALO: CODE TIMING ACQUISITION FOR DS-CDMA IN FADING CHANNELS 909

• DC-MUSIC performs well when the processing gain is from which the first equation in (30) follows. The derivation of
small; the second one is entirely similar and is omitted.
• an additional procedure can be attached to both methods,
improving the estimation accuracy by a negligible in- APPENDIX C
crease in computation.
These features were verified by numerical experiments in down- A. Derivation of (31)
link environment, making the proposed methods attractive op- To shorten notations, define and
tions to be attached for the next generation mobile receivers.
. Taking square roots on both
Future research in the context of the paper include, e.g., more
sides of (30), we have
efficient interference suppression mechanisms, which are vital
especially when short preambles are used. Also the possibility (48)
of using the methods for tracking purposes via decision feed-
(49)
back is our ongoing subject.
which is a system of equations with two unknowns, and
APPENDIX A . Dividing (48) by (49) we obtain
A. Derivation of (19)
(50)
First, from (8) we have
By simple algebraic manipulations it leads to

..
.

(51)

from which (31) is obtained by denoting .

where the second equation follows from
third is due to definition
from which (19) immediately follows.
APPENDIX B
A. Derivation of (30)
Recall from Section III that
and
Thus, we first may write
Defining , we have
(42)
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 49, NO. 5, MAY 2001
Tapani Ristaniemi (M’00) was born in Kauhava,
Finland, in July 1971. He received the M.Sc. degree
in pure mathematics, the Ph.Lic. degree in applied
mathematics, and the Ph.D. degree in telecommuni-
cations from the University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä,
Finland, in 1995, 1997, and 2000, respectively.
He is Senior Research Scientist at the Department
of Mathematical Information Technology, University
of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland. His research in-
terests include signal processing and radio resource
management for wireless communication systems.
Jyrki Joutsensalo (M’94) was born in Kiukainen,
Finland, in July 1966. He received the diploma en-
gineer, licentiate of technology, and doctor of tech-
nology degrees from the Helsinki University of Tech-
nology, Espoo, Finland, in 1992, 1993, and 1994, re-
spectively.
Currently, he is Professor of Telecommunications
at the Department of Mathematical Information
Technology, University of Jyvaskyla. His current
research interests include signal processing for
wireless radio communications and data networks.