Rapid combined synchronization/demodulation structures for DS-CDMA systems - Part I: Algorithmic developments

Blind adaptive linear receivers are considered for the demodulation of direct-sequence code-division multiple-access signals in asynchronous transmissions. The proposed structures are self-synchronized in the sense that adaptive synchronization and demodulation are viewed and treated as an integrated receiver operation. Two computationally efficient combined synchronization/demodulation schemes are proposed, developed, and analyzed. The first scheme is based on the principles of minimum-variance distortionless-response processing, while the second scheme follows the principles of auxiliary-vector filtering and exhibits enhanced performance in short data-record scenarios. In both cases, the resulting receiver is a linear structure of order exactly equal to the system processing gain. Simulation studies included in this paper demonstrate the coarse synchronization as well as the bit-error rate performance of the proposed strategies. A sequel article (Part II of this paper) deals with theoretical finite data-record receiver performance analysis.