System and method for acquiring a received signal in a spread spectrum device

• US 20030193992A1
• Filed: 04/30/2003
• Published: 10/16/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 04/09/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Christopher Patrick, Farrokh Abrishamkar, Gil Sih, Ian Fevrier, Raghu Challa, Serguei Glazko, Way-Shing Lee
• Original Assignee: Christopher Patrick, Farrokh Abrishamkar, Gil Sih, Ian Fevrier, Raghu Challa, Serguei Glazko, Way-Shing Lee
• Inventors: Lee, Way-Shing, Abrishamkar, Farrokh, Patrick, Christopher, Challa, Raghu, Glazko, Serguei, Sih, Gil, Fevrier, Ian
• Granted Patent: US 6,700,922 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 375/147
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 17/0085 using test signal generators
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 17/3912 Simulation models, e.g. distribution of spectral power density or received signal strength indicator [RSSI] for a given geographic region
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/00 Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 56/0035 detecting errors in frequency or phase

Abstract

A spread spectrum wireless device (100) may include a receiver (110), a searcher (128), a search controller (130) and other features. The search controller (130) selectively generates control signals to control the searcher (128), which searches for a spread-spectrum signal. In one embodiment, the architecture of the searcher (128) is dynamically configurable by the search controller (130) to selectively search multiple channels using multiple frequency bins for the signal.

Claims

1. A searcher to search for a received signal in a spread-spectrum system, the searcher comprising:

a reconfigurable signal routing circuit to route the received signal;

a plurality of rotators to adjust the phase of the received signal and thereby generate a phase-adjusted signal;

a plurality of searcher data buffers to store the phase-adjusted signal;

a generator to generate a pseudo-noise (PN) signal;

a PN buffer to store the generated PN signal;

a pairing logic circuit to pair the stored phase-adjusted signal with the stored generated PN signal; and

a search controller to generate control signals to control operation of the signal routing circuit, the rotators and the pairing logic circuit.

2. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the search controller also generates control signals to control operation of the generator.

3. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the search controller further generates control signals to control operation of the plurality of searcher data buffers.

4. The searcher of claim 3 wherein the rotators and searcher data buffers are selectively enabled and the received signal is a single channel signal and the search controller generates control signals:

to enable one of the plurality of rotators;

to route the received signal to the enabled rotator;

to adjust the phase of the received signal;

to enable one of the searcher data buffers;

to store the phase-adjusted signal in the enabled searcher data buffer; and

to pair the phase-adjusted signal stored in the enabled searcher data buffer with the PN signal stored in the PN buffer.

5. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the phase adjustment applied by one of the plurality of rotators is zero.

6. The searcher of claim 1 wherein each of the plurality of rotators applies a different phase adjustment to the received signal.

7. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the plurality of searcher data buffers is comprised of an input data shift register.

8. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the plurality of searcher data buffers is comprised of a plurality of input data shift registers.

9. The searcher of claim 1, further comprising a plurality of generators to generate a plurality of PN signals and a plurality of PN buffers to store the plurality of generated PN signals.

10. The searcher of claim 9 wherein each of the plurality of PN buffers stores an identical generated PN signal.

11. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the received signal is a multi-channel signal and the search controller generates control signals to route a channel of the multi-channel signal to one of the plurality of rotators.

12. The searcher of claim 11 wherein the search controller generates control signals to route another channel of the multi-channel signal to another one of the plurality of rotators.

13. The searcher of claim 1, further comprising a filter to process the received signal into a multi-channel signal wherein the search controller generates control signals to route a channel of the multi-channel signal to one of the plurality of rotators.

14. The searcher of claim 13 wherein the search controller generates control signals to route another channel of the multi-channel signal to another one of the plurality of rotators.

15. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the spread-spectrum communication system is a code division multiple access system.

16. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the signal routing circuit comprises a plurality of multiplexer circuits.

17. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the pairing logic circuit comprises a plurality of multiplexer circuits.

18. The searcher of claim 1 wherein at least one of the plurality of rotators is shared with another component of the system.

19. The searcher of claim 1 wherein at least one of the plurality of searcher data buffers is shared with another component of the system.

20. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the received signal is a multi-channel signal with each channel of the multi-channel signal containing signal energy, further comprising a posterior energy combiner to selectively combine the energy of the channels of the multi-channel signal.

21. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the received signal is a pilot signal.

22. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the received signal is a multichannel pilot signal.

23. The searcher of claim 1 wherein the received signal is a global position system signal.

24. A searcher to search for a single channel received signal in a spread-spectrum system, the searcher comprising:

a signal routing circuit to route the received signal;

a plurality of rotators to adjust the phase of the received signal and thereby generate a plurality of phase-adjusted signals;

a plurality of searcher data buffers to store the plurality of phase-adjusted signals;

a plurality of generators to generate a plurality of pseudo-noise (PN) signals; and

a plurality of PN buffers to store the plurality of generated PN signals;

wherein the system is dynamically configurable to independently apply a phase-adjustment with each of the plurality of rotators, to independently generate the plurality of generated PN signals, and to independently pair the phase-adjusted signals stored in the plurality of searcher data buffers with the PN signals stored in the plurality of PN buffers.

25. A searcher to search for a multi-channel received signal in a spread-spectrum system, the searcher comprising:

a signal routing circuit to route the channels of the received signal;

a plurality of rotators to adjust the phase of the channels of the received signal and thereby generate a plurality of phase-adjusted signals;

a plurality of searcher data buffers to store the plurality of phase-adjusted channel signals;

a plurality of generators to generate a plurality of pseudo-noise (PN) signals; and

a plurality of PN buffers to store the plurality of generated PN signals;

wherein the system is dynamically configurable to independently route the channels of the received signal to any of the plurality of rotators, to independently apply a phase-adjustment with each of the plurality or rotators, to independently generate the plurality of generated PN signals, and to independently pair the phase-adjusted channel signals stored in the plurality of searcher data buffers with the PN signals stored in the plurality of PN buffers.