Differential Coherent Code Acquisition in the Multiple Transmit/Receive Antenna Aided DS-CDMA Downlink

In this contribution we investigate both differentially coherent and noncoherent code acquisition schemes in the multiple transmit/receive antenna aided DS-CDMA downlink, when communicating over uncorrelated Rayleigh channels. It is demonstrated that in contrast to our expectations, the achievable Mean Acquisition Time (MAT) degrades at low Ec/Io values, as the number of transmit antennas is increased in both differentially coherent and noncoherent code acquisition system scenarios, even though the degree of performance degradation depends upon the specific scheme considered. Ironically, our findings suggest that increasing the number of transmit antennas in a MIMO-aided CDMA system results in combining the low-energy, noise-contaminated signals of the transmit antennas, which ultimately increases the MAT by an order of magnitude, when the SINR is relatively low. Therefore our future research will be aimed at specifically designing acquisition schemes for MIMO systems