2017 17th IEEE International Conference on Communication Technology

A Synchronization Acquisition Algorithm for Wireless Communication System in

High Dynamic Environment

Manshu Li1,2, Yufan Cheng1, Xuezhe Wang1, Fucheng Yan1

1
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Communications, UESTC, Chengdu, China
2
Science and Technology on Communication Networks Laboratory, CETC54, Shijiazhuang, China
e-mail: limanshu1123@163.com

Abstract—This paper presents a novel code acquisition correlation. The frequency offset is still estimated by the
algorithm that can overcome the reduction of correlation peak received signal.
caused by the Doppler offset in high dynamic environment and
thereby increasing the acquisition probability. Compared with II. SIGNAL MODLE
the existing code acquisition algorithms, this algorithm can We refer to the local acquisition sequence as
improve the acquisition probability under the same false alarm
probability without increasing the algorithm complexity. This
algorithm can deal with high dynamic environments with x ª¬ x1 x2 xL1 º¼  
greater frequency offset, such as high-speed open space
communications and airborne communications. With a
number of simulation experience, the efficacy of the proposed where L1 is the length of the local acquisition sequence. The
acquisition algorithm is validated by the numerical results. ith differential coding output is given by
Keywords-syncronization; acquisition; high dynamic
environment
yi =xi † yi 1  

I. INTRODUCTION where 1 d i d L1 

The transmission signal shall be defined as 
In wireless communication, most of existing code
acquisition algorithms are based on the detection of
correlation peak, which is used to indicate code alignment. 2 Es
s t  ai exp  j 2S f c t  
Large Doppler offsets are inherent to high dynamic T
environment and are likely to cause major problems during
the code acquisition due to the introduced frequency where Es represents the symbol energy, 1/ T represents the
ambiguity. Therefore, it is a problem to realize acquisition in
symbol rate, and ai represents the modulated symbol at the
high dynamic environment. To overcome the acquisition
problem in an environment that both the phase delay and the nth slot, which is given by
Doppler frequency deviation exist, various techniques for
code acquisition have been developed. ­1 , yi 1
ai ®  
Existing strategies for code acquisition are sequential [1] ¯ 1 , yi 0
and parallel [2] detection, matched filters [3], and approaches
based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) [4], [9]. 2-dimensional The filter output DPSK signal at the reception end can be
search of frequency offset and code phases is the most written as
common approach [6]-[8] which sequentially search all
phases over the range of anticipated frequency offset. This
2 Es
approach is easy to implement but can lead to high time ri  t  ai exp  j 2S f c t   wi  t  
complexity over a wide range of Doppler offsets. In the T
1990s, FFT is used to compete the correlation function in the
frequency domain [4] to eliminating the time-consuming
code phase shift process, but this method only applies to the
acquisition of pseudo-random sequence with a complete
cycle. In 2000, an approach [9] uses a set of partial
correlators for code phase acquisition, combined with a FFT
(PMF-FFT) for the purpose of simultaneous Doppler
estimation. Many advanced algorithms are derived from
PMF-FFT based schemes. [10]-[15]
The approach outlined in this paper can reduce the
attenuation caused by frequency offsets before the code
978-1-5090-3944-9/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
The value wi  t  in (5) denotes the ith noise sample of
additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN).
III. ACQUISITION SCHEME
The synchronization acquisition scheme in high dynamic
environment is divided into two parts. In the code
synchronization part, the differential demodulation soft
information of the filtered received signal is calculated to
complete the first-order correlation. The first-order
correlation values are used to correlate with the secondary
1407
acquisition pattern and find the position where the secondary Figure 2 depicts the normalized values correlation peaks
correlation peak exceeds the threshold, which represents the for a data rate of 1MHz, and the range of possible Doppler
success of code phase acquisition. In the frequency offset shifts is from 0 Hz to 200 kHz.
part, frequency offset is estimated from the received signal
without the deferential demodulation. A. Acquisition Scheme
The local acquisition pattern of length L in this paper is The synchronization acquisition scheme uses the
composed of L2 local acquisition sequences differential demodulation soft information of the received
signal to correlate with the local acquisition sequence. The
x= ª¬ x1 x2 xL1 º¼ . Each one of these sequence consists of L1 acquisition process is divided into two levels, the specific
modulation symbols. The phases of the L2 local acquisition program is as follows:
sequences constitutes a local secondary acquisition pattern x The differential demodulation is carried out at the
jT symbol level on the received signal, and the
b= ªe jT1 e jT2 e L2 º = ª¬b1 b2 bL2 º¼ . Figure 1 depicts the demodulation soft information sequence is obtained.
¬ ¼
structure of local acquisition pattern. x The first-order correlation value is calculated using
the current differential demodulation soft
Local Acquisition Pattern, L L1 L2modulation symbols
information sequence and the local acquisition
Local Acquisition Local Acquisition Local Acquisition jT
sequence.
Sequence x ˜ e jT1 Sequence x ˜ e jT2 Sequence x ˜ e LL22 x The second-order correlation value is calculated
L1 modulation symbols using continuous and equally spaced L2 correlation
Figure 1. Structure of local acquisition pattern. values and the local secondary acquisition pattern.
x Determine whether the absolute value of the
The local acquisition pattern is N samp times up-sampled secondary correlation value is greater than the
threshold, if so, the acquisition is completed; if not,
into a local synchronization signal waveform s . Then the change relative position of the local acquisition
baseband oversampling sequence at the receiving end can be sequence and receiving sequence, then recalculate
written as the primary and secondary correlation values.

rn 
sn exp j  2S'fnTsamp  'T   wn   B. Frequency Offset Estimation
A multi-level frequency offset estimation conducted after
the completion of acquisition. The received signal before the
with ^wn ` denotes the nth noise sample of additive white differential demodulation is used to implement a partial
Gaussian noise (AWGN), 'f represents the frequency offset, correlation with the local acquisition signal waveform to
obtain the partial correlation values, which can be used to
'T represents the phase offset, and Tsamp is the sample time. calculate the frequency offset.
To understand the influence of frequency offset on the
correlator output. If the phase between the transmitter and IV. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
receiver is aligned and noise is ignored, the correlation peak
can be rewritten with the presence of Doppler shift as A. Theoretical Performance Analysis
The received sequence has the form:
1 sin S f d N samp L1Tsamp 
cn 
N samp L1 sin S f d Tsamp  § ·
rn  
Ps sn  wn exp ¨  j 2S'f
¨
n
Rsymb N samp
¸¸ 
© ¹
1

0.9

0.8
where wn subject to complex Gaussian distribution and can
Absolute Values of Correlation Peaks

0.7
be written as
0.6

0.5
wn ~ CN  0, 2V 2  
0.4

0.3
Then power of each received signal sample is given by
0.2

ƒ  rn   ‚  rn  ~ F 2  2, O  
2 2
0.1
Pn
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
Doppler offset,Hz 5
x 10

Figure 2. The influence of frequency offset on correlation peaks.

1408
where O E 2 ª¬ƒ  rn º¼  E 2 ª¬‚  rn º¼ Ps , ƒ  rn  and It approximately obeying the complex Gaussian
distribution with expectations and variance written as
ƒ  rn  are the real and imaginary parts of rn , respectively.
The expectation and variance of Ps can be written as ­ 1 L1 1

° E ( zn )
° L1
¦ x E  d  =μ
i 0
*
i n i z

® 
° E  Pn  2V  Ps
­ 2
° D( z ) 1 L1 1
Ps  4 PsV 2 +4V 4
®
°̄ D  Pn  4V  4V Ps
4 2

° n
L12
D  d n  ¦ xi
*
=
L1
2V 2
z
¯ i 0

The samples after extraction are independent and The second-order normalized correlation value thus can
identically distributed, so that the symbol-level average be written as
1 LP
power U ¦ Pi approximately obeying the Gaussian 1 L2 1
LP i 1
distribution when L P is long enough, with expectations and
cn
L2
¦b z
i 0
*
i n +iLacq 

variance written as
The module value of the first-order normalized
­ PU E U  =2V 2  Ps correlation value is given by
°
® 2 4V 4 +4V 2 Ps 
D U  =
L1 1
°V U 1
¯ LP vn cn
L1
¦x d
i 0
*
i n i 

The received symbol-level sequence of length L1 can be

Which obey the Rice distribution, with the probability
expressed as rn ^r n iNsamp `, i 0,1, L1  1 , so that the density function described as:
differential demodulation soft information sequence can be
described as v § v 2  a 2 · § va ·
fV  v  exp ¨  I
2 ¸ 0¨ 2 ¸
ˈ v t 0 
Vc 2
© 2V c ¹ © V c ¹
dn rn rn  Nsamp exp   j 2S'f Rsymb 
 The coefficient in (20) is given by
yn exp   j 2S'f Rsymb 

μc = Re  μc   Im  μc  
2 2
where the characteristic function of yn is given by a

  ·¸
And the noise variance is given by
¨  s
§ 2V 2Z 2 2 P 2  2 jZ Re E  r  2  Im E  r  2
 n  n
exp ¨  ¸ Ps  4 PsV 2 +4V 4
¨ 2 1  4V Z 
4 2
¸ 2V c 2 = 
\ y Z  © ¹  L2 L1
1  4V 4Z 2
 The probability of a false alarm of the secondary
correlation is given as
According to the relationship between the characteristic
equation and the moment, the variance of yn can be derived f
Pfa P V t VT  ³ fV  v  dv
as VT

§ a GU· 
D  yn  Ps  4V Ps  4V 
2 4 =Q1 ¨ , t1 ¸
© Vc Vc ¹
The first-order normalized correlation value can be where
written as
f
§ x2  D 2 ·
1 L1 1
Q1 D , E  ³E x exp ¨ ¸I 0 D x  dx 
zn
L1
¦x d
i 0
*
i n i  © 2 ¹

1409
 The threshold is given by VT Gt1U , where U can be complexity of these two algorithms, time complexity of the
scheme in this paper is L  L1  , while the time complexity of
2
written as U 2V +Ps when the receiving sequence is long
2

enough and Gt1 is the threshold factor that can be derived by PMF-FFT is L3  L2 lg  L  .
(14) according to the false alarm probability requirement. 1

B. Simulation Results 0.9

Simulations with different frequency offsets have been 0.8

carried out firstly to compare the acquisition performance of

Acquisition Probability
0.7
the algorithm introduced in this paper with conventional
sequential acquisition method in AWGN channel under the 0.6
same false alarm probability. The length of local acquisition
0.5
sequence is L1 127 and the length of local secondary
acquisition pattern is L2 7 . When Es / N0 =0dB , the false 0.4
-4
alarm probability of both methods is 10 . 0.3
Algorithm in this paper L=889
The curves in Figure 3 consider a Doppler offset of 3.5 0.2 PMF-FFT Algorithm L=889 N=1024
kHz. Note that when acquisition probability of both methods PMF-FFT Algorithm L=889 N=2048
is 0.9, the acquisition performance of this new acquisition 0.1 PMF-FFT Algorithm L=511 N=1024
scheme is 2dB better than the conventional scheme. 0
PMF-FFT Algorithm L=1023 N=2048
Furthermore, the method in this paper can reach an -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2
Es/N0(dB)
acquisition probability of 0.9 at a Es / N0 =-2.5dB and a
100kHz frequency offset, in which environment the Figure 4. Acquisition peformance of PMF-FFT algorithm and algorithm
in this paper using different FFT sizes and different acquisition sequences.
conventional acquisition scheme cannot cope with the high
Doppler offset at all. The performance simulation of frequency offset is
1
conducted for each Es / N0 between 0~10dB with an initial
0.9 frequency offset of 100 kHz. Figure 5 presents the
0.8 comparison of multiple-level frequency offset estimation
algorithm and single-level traditional algorithm, which
0.7
shows that the RMSE of the multiple-level estimation is
Acquisition Probability

0.6 about 10dB better than the conventional single–level scheme.

40
0.5 CRLB
35 multiple-level frequency offset estimation
0.4 Single-level frequency offset estimation
0.3 30
Frequency offset estimate RMSE

0.2
Conventional Algorithm 'f 3.5kHz 25
0.1 Algorithm in this paper 'f 3.5kHz
Algorithm in this paper 'f 100kHz 20
-8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6
Es / N 0  dB  15

Figure 3. Acquisition peformance of the algorithm proposed in this paper 10

with different frequency offsets compared with conventional method.
5
A worse-case scenario is considered with a 200 kHz
frequency offset. Since the conventional method no longer 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
suit such environment, we compared our algorithm with Es/N0(dB)
PMF-FFT method, which is one of the most commonly used
Figure 5. Frequency offset estimation performance of multiple-level
algorithm in the environment with greater frequency offset.. algorithm and single-level algorithm.
The simulation results depicted in Figure 4 shows that
increasing the FFT point or the length of local acquisition
sequence in PMF_FFT method results in a slight increase V. CONCLUSIONS
of the acquisition probability, but a great increase of the In this paper, we presented a synchronization acquisition
algorithm complexity. No matter what, the acquisition algorithm in high dynamic environment. Unlike conventional
probability of PMF_FFT scheme is still 1~1.5dB worse than acquisition scheme that suffers from the effect of frequency
the scheme introduced in this paper. Furthermore, in such offset, algorithm proposed in this paper is capable of
scenario, if we use the same length L to analysis the overcoming the large Doppler shift in high dynamic

1410
environment without requiring additional time for the
frequency search. Simulation results showed that the
acquisition probability of this novel scheme increased
dramatically compared with conventional method. Moreover,
compared with the FFT based method, the acquisition
probability is still 1~1.5 dB better with a drop of time
complexity at the same time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by the Fund Project of
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on
Communications under Grant 150C02006, the Science and
Technology on Communication Networks Laboratory
Program under grant KX172600032.
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