An efficient code-timing acquisition for MIMO-CDMA systems

Two efficient algorithms are proposed for estimating code timing in a code-division multiple-access system in which multiple antennas are used at the transmitter and receiver. One of the algorithms is a pilot data transmission technique; while pilots in a conventional method are transmitted continuously, they are cyclically transmitted over each transmit antenna in the proposed algorithm. Hence, when compared to the conventional method, code allocation efficiency and more powerful transmission for unmodulated pilot channels could be achieved. The other is a weighted average (WA) method in which code-timing acquisition is achieved by averaging the estimated delays by weight. In addition, we propose two efficient code-timing estimators based on the proposed algorithms. Based on the analysis in this paper, the performance of the WA method is better than the equal-gain average method. Simulation results show that the two code-timing estimators based on the proposed methods provide a better code-timing acquisition performance than the conventional method.