Reduce-by-half acquisition for UWB in the dense multipath channel

In this paper, we analyze the rapid acquisition of UWB signals in the dense multipath environment. Performances of conventional acquisition algorithms are presented. From the analysis it is concluded that the optimal search strategy is a simple "Jump-by-K" structure. However, it must know the number of multipath K in advance, so it isn't practicable. Although the algorithm called bit-reversal search doesn't need the knowledge of K and its performance is approximately comparable to the Jump-by-K, the fatal disadvantage is that the number of cells N must be a power of 2. In this paper, a novel rapid acquisition algorithm, called Reduce-by-half search, is proposed for UWB in the dense multipath environment. It overcomes all the restrictions and can work in arbitrary conditions regardless of the values of N and K. It has the similar performance to Jump-by-K. Computational and simulation results indicate that reduce-by-half search is a very excellent search algorithm.