Partial Correlation Properties of Pseudonoise (PN) Codes in Noncoherent Synchronization/Detection Schemes

Abstract

This concise paper considers the effect on the autocorrelation function of a pseudonoise (PN) code when the acquisition scheme only integrates coherently over part of the code and then noncoherently combines these results. The peak-to-null ratio of the effective PN autocorrelation function is shown to degrade to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">n^{-1/2}</tex> , where <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">n</tex> is the number of PN symbols over which coherent integration takes place.