Coherent DS-CDMA Acquisition in Time-Variant
Channels at Low Signal to Noise Ratios
Ingmar Groh, Student Member, IEEE, and Stephan Sand, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract This paper presents a novel acquisition method for
time-variant channels, which yield a different channel phasor for
each transmission symbol due to the non-zero Doppler frequency.
The alternating channel phasors prevent a coherent symbol
averaging and require an incoherent or a differentially-coherent
symbol averaging instead. Compared to the incoherent symbol
averaging, the differentially-coherent symbol averaging yields
a higher acquisition probability, since it avoids the squaring
loss (SL). However, high data rates with rapidly alternating
modulation symbols reduce the acquisition probability of the
differentially-coherent symbol averaging remarkably. Thus, this
paper presents a novel rate independent delay acquisition
method, that even yields a higher acquisition probability com-
pared to the differentially-coherent symbol averaging and com-
pared to the incoherent symbol averaging anyway. The increased
acquisition probability in our simulation results corresponds to
a signal to noise ratio (SNR) gain of at least 0.4 dB compared to
the differentially-coherent symbol averaging and of at least 1 dB
compared to the incoherent symbol averaging, and we reduce the
receiver complexity at the same time.
Index Terms squaring loss, coherent averaging, differentially-
coherent averaging, multiple signal classification
I. INTRODUCTION
The acquisition with high detection probability [1][3] is a
key synchronization task, since a high acquisition probability
is the main prerequisite for the tracking and thereby for
a good data transmission or position estimation. Especially
for navigation receivers, the long signal delay and the high
power dampings in satellite navigation channels yield low
signal to noise ratios (SNRs) and thereby a low acquisition
probability. To increase the acquisition probability at low
SNRs, the acquisition methods have to perform a suitable
symbol averaging. So, any SNR improvement is possible for
constant channel phasors, which enable the coherent symbol
averaging. However, realistic time-variant channels require the
incoherent symbol averaging instead of the coherent symbol
averaging. But the acquisition probability for incoherent sym-
bol averaging reduces remarkably compared to the coherent
symbol averaging due to the squaring loss (SL) [2], [4].
To prevent the disadvantages of the coherent and the inco-
herent symbol averaging, the authors in [4][6] designed the
differentially-coherent symbol averaging, that also provides
a Doppler frequency estimate. Another popular strategy to
process time-variant channel phasors computes the fast Fourier
transform (FFT) corresponding to several Doppler frequencies
for each delay hypothesis [7]. For the FFT method, the
I. Groh and Dr. S. Sand are with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), In-
for Communications and Navigation (KN), 82234
2011
978-1-61284-4577-0188-7/11/$26.00
stitute cWessling, Germany,
IEEE122
E-mail {Firstname.Lastname}@dlr.de.
number of acquisition hypothesis is increased by a factor of
the FFT length, although the FFT method outperforms the
differentially-coherent symbol averaging [4][6] with respect
to the acquisition probability. Obviously, the FFT method and
the differentially-coherent symbol averaging can be combined
to reduce the high number of acquisition hypothesis [4][6]
and the high computational complexity of the FFT method.
A further popular strategy to get rid of the SL due to time-
variant channel phasors consists in high resolution estimation
methods, such as the multiple signal classification (MUSIC)
algorithm [1], [8]. The authors in [1], [8] compute the signal
subspace estimate by an eigenvalue decomposition (EVD)
corresponding to a coherently estimated covariance matrix.
The coherently averaged sample covariance matrix yields a
multipath delay acquisition with high probability even at
low SNRs. However, the authors in [1], [8] do not compare
the acquisition probabilities of the one-dimensional MUSIC
method and the standard symbol averaging methods, especially
the incoherent and the differentially-coherent symbol averag-
ing. Besides the acquisition probability comparison, the delay
acquisition based on MUSIC and the standard acquisition
methods must be compared with respect to the impact of the
data rate on the acquisition probability.
In this contribution, we compare the acquisition probabil-
ities of the sub-chip channel delay acquisition based on the
one-dimensional MUSIC algorithm [1], of the differentially-
coherent symbol averaging, and of the incoherent symbol
averaging. Our simulations show that the sub-chip chan-
nel delay acquisition based on MUSIC [1] outperforms the
differentially-coherent and the incoherent symbol averaging
with respect to the acquisition probability even without data
modulation. Afterwards, we show the influence of different
data rates on the acquisition probability. Contrary to the one-
dimensional MUSIC algorithm, an increased data rate yields a
reduced acquisition probability for the differentially-coherent
symbol averaging. The increased acquisition probability of
the novel sub-chip channel delay acquisition corresponds to a
signal to noise ratio (SNR) gain of at least 0.4 dB compared
to the differentially-coherent symbol averaging and of at least
1 dB compared to the incoherent symbol averaging, and we
reduce the receiver complexity at the same time. Besides the
remarkable SNR improvement, the sub-chip channel delay
acquisition based on MUSIC [1] achieves a high sub-chip
resolution with the standard chip-delayed correlators. On the
contrary, the standard symbol averaging methods require a
multiple number of correlators to cover sub-chip channel
delays. Thus, the novel sub-chip channel delay acquisition
achieves a remarkably increased acquisition probability with a
far lower computational complexity compared to the standard
averaging methods.
This paper is organized as follows. Sec. II introduces the
channel and spread-spectrum system model. We summarize
the standard acquisition methods [4] in Sec. III. Sec. IV
presents the novel channel delay acquisition based on MUSIC.
Simulations for time-variant channels in Sec. V show the
higher acquisition probability of our novel method in Sec. IV
compared to the conventional methods in Sec. III.
Notation: Lower- and upper-case bold letters denote vectors
and matrices, and sans-serif font is used for random quanti-
T H
ties. E [], , () , , and () denote expectation, pulse sample vector g on its diagonal. The columns of the
estimation, transposed, complex conjugate, and Hermitian.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
This section introduces the system model that comprises
the channel, the spread-spectrum signal, the interpolation of
sub-chip channel delays, and the observation vector that the
acquisition methods process.
We show the superiority of our novel method compared to
the conventional acquisition methods in [2][4] for the flat-
fading Rayleigh channel
h(, t) = h0 (t)( 0 ), (1)
with the correlation function in time direction [9], [10]
Rh0 (t) = E [h0 (t) h0 (t + t)] = J0 (2fD,max t) , (2)
where J0 () is the first-kind Bessel function of order zero.
The standard acquisition methods in [2][4] confine to the
acquisition of the flat-fading Rayleigh channel in (1). On the
contrary, our novel methods based on the maximization of
of MUSIC spectra enable the low complexity high resolution
delay acquisition of multipath channels. For multipath channel
acquisition based on MUSIC [1], the dimension of the signal
subspace corresponds to the number of channel paths.
The direct sequence spread spectrum signal with a root
raised cosine (RRC) pulse g(t) with one sided limit frequency
fN and roll off factor reads
M
X 1 N
X 1
s(t) = dP,m cP,n g(t mT nTC ), (3)
m=0 n=0
where T = N TC , TC = 1/RC , and RC denote the symbol
duration, the chip duration, and the chip rate. In (3), the
pilot spreading code cP,n , n = 0, . . . , N 1 is an orthog-
onal Gold code of length N , and M quartenary phase shift
keying (QPSK) pilot symbols form the time interval for signal
acquisition [2], [4], [11]. The M QPSK pilot symbols yield
M successive signal vectors sm CN Q , m = 1, . . . , M
T
as sm = [s[(m 1)N Q], . . . , s[mN Q 1]] with the ele-
ments s[k] = s (k/fS ) , k = (m 1)N Q, . . . , mN Q 1,
where the over-sampling factor Q = fS /RC defines the
samples per chip dependent on the sampling frequency fS .
Therefore, the sampled signal in matrix vector notation reads
s = [sT T T
1 , . . . , sM ] CM N Q with the mth signal vector
sm = dP,m CP g and the pilot code matrix CP CN QNPP
and the zero-padded sampled RRC pulse g CNPP . The zero- 123
padded sampled RRC pulse g CNPP contains NP RRC pulse
samples padded with NPP NP zeros, where NPP is chosen
as the next power of two larger than or equal to the number
of pulse samples NP . For even NP , the zero-padded sampled
RRC pulse reads g = [0T NZ , g((NP 1)/(2fS )), . . . , g((NP
1)/(2fS )), 0T
NZ ]T
CNPP
.
The Fourier interpolation [11] of the pulse sample vector g
models a pulse shift as
g( ) F 1 diag {FFT {g}} ( ) , (4)
NPP NPP
where diag {FFT {g}} C denotes the diagonal
matrix with the fast Fourier transform (FFT) FFT {g} of the
spreading code matrix CP CN QNPP are circular shifts of
(Q) (Q)
the vector cP e1 CN Q , where and e1 denote the
Kronecker product and the Qth column of the Q-dimensional
unit matrix 1Q . The matrix F 1 CNPP NPP is the
in-
verse permuted Fourier matrix with the elements F 1 k =
exp (j (2/NPP ) (k NPP /2)( NPP /2)), k, = 1, . . . , NPP .
The Vandermonde vector ( ) CNPP consists of the
elements ( ( ))k = exp (j(2Q/NPP )(k NPP /2) ), k =
1, . . . , NPP . The interpolated spreading signal reads s( ) =
[sT T T
1 ( ), . . . , sM ( )] C
MNQ
with the interpolated spread-
ing signals sm ( ) = dP,m CP g( ) = dP,m sP ( ) corresponding
to the mth symbol.
The observation vector for the flat-fading Rayleigh channel
in (1) reads
y = h 0 s(0 ) + n, (5)
where the noise vector n = [n(0), . . . , n((M N Q 1)TS )]T
CM N Q summarizes the samples of the additive white
Gaussian noise (AWGN) n(t) Nc 0, n2 , and h 0 =


[h0 (0), . . . , h0 ((M N Q 1)TS )]T CM N Q forms the channel
phasor vector, and denotes the element-wise product
of two vectors. The SNR is defined according to (5) as
= 1/n2 . M successive observations y m CN Q , m =
1, . . . , M form the observation vector y = [y T T T
1 , . . . , yM]
MNQ
C . Therefore, the m-th observation vector in (5) reads
y m = h 0,m sm (0 ) + n m CN Q . The noise vector n
and the channel phasor vector h 0 have the same structure
as the observation vector y . Obviously, a sectioning of the
M = NSL NCP symbols in the observation vector y , in
the channel phasor vector h 0 , and in the noise vector n
into NSL time slots with NCP symbols according to s( ) =
(N ),T (N ),T (N )
[s1 CP ( ), . . . , sNSLCP ( )]T CM N Q , where snSLCP ( ) =
T T T NCP N Q
[s(nSL 1)NCP +1 ( ), . . . , snSL NCP ( )] C is also possi-
ble.
III. SIGNAL ACQUISITION
This section reviews the symbol averaging methods accord-
ing to [1], [2], [4], where the signal acquisition is implemented
with the correlator bank
SP = [sP (G,1 ), . . . , sP (G,LMF )] CN QLMF , (6)
which summarizes LMF correlators corresponding to the delay
T
vector G = [G,1 , . . . , G,LMF ] CLMF . The conventional
delay difference for any communication receiver [1], [2]
reads G,MF G,MF 1 = TC for MF = 2, . . . , LMF . To
obtain sub-chip delay estimates for position estimation in
navigation receivers [11], [12], the standard symbol averaging C. Differentially-Coherent Symbol Averaging
methods in this section require a sub-chip delay difference, This subsection reviews the differentially-coherent symbol
e. g. G,MF G,MF 1 = TC /2 [4]. On the contrary, our novel averaging [4][6]
high resolution subspace methods enable an arbitrary sub-chip
 2
N 1 
delay resolution with the conventional delay difference G,MF  XSL 
(NCP )
 
(NCP )
0 = argmax  znSL (G,MF ) znSL +1 (G,MF )  ,
 
G,MF 1 = TC , which saves a lot of correlators and guarantees
a low complexity high resolution acquisition. These correlators
run in the sample time and need to be implemented in ASIC,
ASIP, or FPGA. Thus, our novel acquisition method based on
MUSIC is far less complex and yields far less implementation
costs. All following standard symbol averaging methods use
the correlator outputs for MF = 1, . . . , LMF
z(N CP ) (NCP ),H
nSL (MF ) = snSL (MF )y (N CP )
nSL , (7)
where the correlator bank SP covers the full channel spread.
Also, the spreading Gold code assumes perfect autocorrelation
properties with SPH SP = 1LMF despite over-sampling.
The subsections in this section are organized as follows.
Subsec. III-A presents the coherent symbol averaging. How-
ever, the coherent symbol averaging is only adequate for a
constant channel phasor with fD,max = 0 Hz. For a non-
zero Doppler frequency with fD,max > 0 Hz, the incoherent
symbol averaging in Subsec. III-B is another option for
symbol averaging. However, the incoherent symbol averaging
suffers remarkably from the SL contrary to the differentially-
coherent symbol averaging in Subsec. III-C [4], [6]. As in
[1], [2], [4], [13], the channel phasor rotations within one
symbol are negligible due to a large spreading factor N . Only
the phasor rotations exp (j2fD T ) between two symbols are
meaningful [1], [4], especially for the differentially-coherent
symbol averaging in Subsec. III-C.
A. Coherent Symbol Averaging
In the sequel, the coherent symbol averaging [4][6] is
briefly summarized, which reads
MF =1,...,LMF  n =1 
SL
(10)
which avoids the SL for fD,max = 0 in contrast to the inco-
herent symbol averaging in Subsec. III-B. Additionally, the
differentially-coherent symbol averaging accounts for time-
variant channel phasors with fD,max > 0 without squaring the
noise power. According to [4][6], the differentially-coherent
symbol averaging can also operate directly on the inphase and
quadrature branch, where the real part Re {} or the imaginary
2
part Im {} replace the squared magnitude || in (10).
IV. MULTIPLE SIGNAL CLASSIFICATION
This section presents our novel channel delay acquisition
based on high resolution subspace estimators. The first step
of these estimators consists in the filtering of the observation
vectors y m , m = 1, . . . , M according to
MF,m = S H y CLMF ,
h (11)
P m
where we use the correlator bank SP in (6). The filtering
in (11)
corresponds to the filtering in (7), where we have
MF,m (1) (1),H (1)
h MF
= zm (MF ) = sm (MF )y m for MF =
1, . . . , LMF and m = 1, . . . , M . For the high resolution
subspace estimators, we assume the same two prerequisites
as for the standard acquisition methods in Sec. III. First,
the correlator bank covers the full channel spread. Second,
the spreading Gold code has almost perfect autocorrelation
properties SPH SP = 1LMF despite over-sampling.
The one-dimensional MUSIC algorithm comprises the fol-
lowing three steps.
First, the output vectors h MF CLMF of the correlator
 N 2 bank are averaged coherently
X SL 
(NCP )
0 = argmax  znSL (G,MF ) . (8)
 
M
MF =1,...,LMF 1 X H LMF LMF
RhMF = h MF,m h MF,m C ,

nSL =1
For a vanishing Doppler frequency fD,max = 0, the coherent
symbol averaging in (8) yields the optimum noise averaging
and thereby the highest acquisition probabilities.
B. Incoherent Symbol Averaging
This subsection briefly summarizes the incoherent symbol
averaging [4][6], which replaces the coherent symbol aver-
aging in Subsec. III-A according to
(12)
M m=1
where the complex channel phasors are multiplied with
its complex conjugate and the result becomes real. Thus,
the coherently estimated covariance matrix in (12) avoids
the SL.
Second, the estimated covariance matrix RhMF
CLMF LMF yields the signal and noise subspace estimate
RhMF = U U H = US S USH + UN N UNH CLMF LMF ,
NSL  2 n (13)
o
T
X  (NCP )
0 = argmax znSL (G,MF ) . (9) where U = [US , UN ] , = diag [1 , . . . , LMF ]

MF =1,...,LMF n =1
SL
Compared to the coherent symbol averaging in Subsec. III-
A, the incoherent symbol averaging in (9) yields reduced
acquisition probabilities for fixed receivers with fD,max = 0 due
to the SL. However, for a non-vanishing Doppler frequency
fD,max > 0, the incoherent symbol averaging outperforms
the coherent averaging in (8), since the incoherent symbol 124
averaging accounts for rotating channel phasors.
LMF LMF
C constitutes the EVD of RhMF . The eigenvalues
along the diagonal matrix are sorted in descending order,
i. e. , 1 > > LMF,S > . . . LMF . LMF,S and LMF,N =
LMF LMF,S denote the the signal and noise subspace
dimension. For the high resolution acquisition of one
single delay, we have LMF,S = 1. US CLMF LMF,S , S
CLMF,S LMF,S and UN CLMF LMF,N , N CLMF,N LMF,N
are the signal and noise parts of U , CLMF LMF .
 roll off factor (RRC pulse): = 0.2
Third, based on the EVD of RhMF , we compute the one sided limit frequency (RRC pulse): fN = 1 MHz
MUSIC spectrum [1], [14] corresponding to the signal physical sampling frequency: fS = 2 MHz

2 chip rate: RC = 1 MHz
hS ( ) =
USH h( )
2


(14) code length (Gold code): N = 1023
number of pulse samples: NP = 22
or the noise subspace
TABLE I
1
hN ( ) =
(15) L IST SPREAD SPECTRUM SIGNAL PARAMETERS [11].

U H h( )
2


N 2
with the effective transmit pulse
sP ( )H sP (0)

1
.. L
h( ) = C MF . (16)

.

acquisition probability within 0.5TC

H 0.9
sP ( ) sP ((LMF 1)TC )
To compute the MUSIC spectra for discrete sub-chip 0.8
delays in (14) and (15), we use the FFT [14], which M = 20
guarantees a low complexity high resolution acqui- 0.7
sition. Due to the autocorrelation properties of the
spreading code, we have for the effective transmit 0.6
pulse (h( ))MF = g((MF 1)TC )H g(0) =
Rg ((MF 1)TC ) , MF = 1, . . . , LMF , where Rg ( ) 0.5 M = 20, incoherent
M = 50 M = 20, diff. coherent
denotes the autocorrelation function of the pulse shape. M = 20, 1D MUSIC
0.4 M = 50, incoherent
Finally, we perform the channel delay estimation M = 50, diff. coherent
M = 50, 1D MUSIC
0 = argmax hS (G,MF ) (17) 0.3
MF =1,...,LMF 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

based on the signal subspace MUSIC spectrum in (14). Alter-
natively, we maximize the noise subspace MUSIC spectrum
in (15) according to
0 = argmax hN (G,MF ) . (18)
MF =1,...,LMF
To minimize the computational complexity of the MUSIC
spectra maximization in (17) and (18), we compute for the
smaller dimension of LMF,S and LMF,N the signal subspace
MUSIC spectrum in (17) or the noise subspace MUSIC
spectrum in (18).
V. SIMULATIONS AND RESULTS
This section presents the simulation results that demonstrate
the superiority of our novel sub-chip channel delay acquisition
method in Sec. IV compared to the standard symbol averaging
methods in Sec. III at low SNRs. All simulations in this
section assume the spread spectrum system parameters in
Tab. I and consider the acquisition of L = 1 channel delays
within 0.5TC with the normalized PDP a20 = 1 [4]. The
acquisition probabilities within 0.5TC in Fig. 1 reveal the
superiority of our novel sub-chip channel delay acquisition
method even for a spread spectrum system without data
modulation. Afterwards, Fig. 2 shows the rate independent
acquisition probability within 0.5TC of our novel sub-chip
channel delay acquisition method in Sec. IV. Our novel sub-
chip channel delay acquisition method in Sec. IV achieves the
sub-chip resolution 0.5TC with the standard chip-delayed
correlators in contrast to the standard symbol averaging meth-
ods, where the channel delay resolution 0.5TC requires twice
the number of correlators.
Fig. 1 shows the influence of the number of symbols 125 M the differentially-coherent symbol averaging [4][6], and the
on the acquisition probability within 0.5TC without data
SNR C/N0 [dB-Hz]
Fig. 1. Acquisition probability versus the SNR C/N0 [dB-Hz] for a various
number of symbols M without data modulation, and a maximum Doppler
frequency of 10% relative to the symbol duration. Note that 1D MUSIC uses
only one half of the correlators used by differentially-coherent or incoherent
symbol averaging.
modulation. We compare the acquisition probability within
0.5TC of the incoherent and the differentially-coherent
symbol averaging, and the one-dimensional MUSIC algorithm
according to Sec. IV and [1]. For any of the three symbol
averaging methods, we see an increased acquisition probability
within 0.5TC for an increased number of symbols M
and an increased SNR C/N0 [dB-Hz]. For a fixed number
of symbols M , the incoherent symbol averaging always per-
forms worst of the three symbol averaging methods. The
coherently estimated covariance matrix and the differentially-
coherent symbol averaging avoid the SL. However, the one-
dimensional MUSIC algorithm for sub-chip channel delay
acquisition with a resolution of 0.5TC performs even better
than the differentially-coherent symbol averaging according to
[4], [6]. Especially for the lowest number of symbol M = 20
in Fig. 1, we see an SNR improvement of several tenths
of dB. Therefore, the novel low complexity high resolution
channel delay acquisition in Sec. IV yields the optimum
symbol averaging even if the degrading influence of the data
modulation on the differentially-coherent symbol averaging is
discarded.
Fig. 2 shows the influence of the data rate RD on the
acquisition probability within 0.5TC for the incoherent and
one-dimensional MUSIC algorithm according to Sec. IV and

1
0.95
acquisition probability within 0.5TC
0.9
0.85
0.8
RD
0.75 RD
1 dB RD
RD
0.7 RD
RD
0.65 RD
RD
RD
0.6
30.5 31 31.5
SNR C/N0 [dB-Hz]
Fig. 2. Acquisition probability versus the SNR C/N0 [dB-Hz] for M = 100
symbols and various data rates RD , and a maximum Doppler frequency of
10% relative to the symbol duration. Note that 1D MUSIC uses only one
half of the correlators used by differentially-coherent or incoherent symbol
averaging. RD = 50 Hz corresponds to the GPS data rate [4].
[1] for M = 100 symbols. As in Fig. 2, the acquisition
probabilities within 0.5TC increase for an increased SNR.
The one-dimensional MUSIC algorithm according to Sec. IV
yields the maximum acquisition probability within 0.5TC
and the incoherent symbol averaging corresponds to the lowest
acquisition probability within 0.5TC . For the differentially-
coherent symbol averaging, the acquisition probability within
0.5TC reduces for an increased data rate RD . For high
data rates, the acquisition probability within 0.5TC for the
differentially-coherent symbol averaging and for the incoher-
ent symbol averaging with the SL are almost the same. Even
for a low data rate RD = 10 Hz, Fig. 2 shows a SNR gain of
0.4 dB of our novel sub-chip channel delay acquisition method
compared to the differentially-coherent symbol averaging.
Compared to the incoherent symbol averaging, the SNR gain
even exceeds 1 dB.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
This contribution presents a novel sub-chip channel delay
acquisition method for time-variant channels based on low
complexity high resolution subspace methods. We achieve a
high sub-chip resolution with the standard chip-delayed cor-
relators in contrast to the standard symbol averaging methods,
where a sub-chip channel delay resolution requires a multiple
number of correlators. Thus, the computational complexity
of our novel acquisition methods for sub-chip channel delay
acquisition is far smaller compared to the standard symbol
averaging methods. Our novel sub-chip channel delay ac-
quisition method uses the coherently estimated covariance
matrix corresponding to the standard chip-delayed correlators.
The coherently estimated covariance matrix avoids the SL
completely and yields an increased acquisition probability 126
compared to the differentially-coherent symbol averaging and
0.4 dB
= 10 Hz, incoherent
= 10 Hz, diff. coherent
= 10 Hz, 1D MUSIC
= 50 Hz, incoherent
= 50 Hz, diff. coherent
= 50 Hz, 1D MUSIC
= 100 Hz, incoherent
= 100 Hz, diff. coherent
= 100 Hz, 1D MUSIC
32 32.5
the incoherent symbol averaging anyway, as our first simula-
tion without data modulation shows. Afterwards, our second
simulation reveals the crucial rate independent acquisition
probability of our novel sub-chip channel delay acquisition
method. On the contrary, an increased data rate reduces the
acquisition probability of differentially-coherent symbol aver-
aging remarkably. Additionally, our second simulations show a
SNR gain of at least 0.4 dB of our novel sub-chip channel de-
lay acquisition method compared to the differentially-coherent
symbol averaging even for low data rates. Compared to the
incoherent symbol averaging, the SNR gain even exceeds
1 dB. Note that our novel algorithm uses only one half of
the correlators used by differentially-coherent or incoherent
symbol averaging.
In future work, we consider the high resolution acquisition
of closely spaced multipath channels, where the standard
methods, such as the differentially-coherent symbol averaging,
fail, and where we need subspace methods, such as MUSIC.
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