Non-Coherent Code Acquisition in the Multiple Transmit/Multiple Receive Antenna Aided Single- and Multi-Carrier DS-CDMA Downlink

We analyse the characteristics of the Non-Coherent (NC) Multiple Transmit/Multiple Receive (MTMR) antenna aided Multi-Carrier (MC) DS-CDMA downlink employing a serial search based acquisition scheme, when communicating over spatially uncorrelated Rayleigh channels. The associated Mean Acquisition Time (MAT) performance trends are characterised as a function of both the number of antennas and that of the number of subcarriers. It is shown that the employment of both multiple transmit antennas and multiple subcarriers is typically detrimental in terms of the achievable NC acquisition performance, while that obtained by exploiting multiple receive antennas is always beneficial, regardless whether single-path or multi-path scenarios are considered. Based on our results justified by information theoretic considerations, our acquisition design guidelines are applicable to diverse NC MTMR antenna aided scenarios. Index Terms—MC-DS-CDMA, non-coherent, transmit/receive/ frequency diversity.