Noise Floor Independent Delay-Locked Loop Discriminator
First Claim
1. A method for determining a phase error of a received communication signal, the method comprising:
- determining an early correlation result between the received communication signal and a first copy of the received communication signal;
determining a prompt correlation result between the received communication signal and a second copy of the received communication signal, the second copy of the received communication signal phase-lagging the first copy by a correlator spacing;
determining a late correlation result between the received communication signal and a third copy of the received communication signal, the third copy of the received communication signal phase-lagging the second copy by the correlator spacing; and
using a noise-floor independent discriminator to generate an auto-correlation function having a peak correlation and calculating the phase error as a spacing between the prompt correlation and the peak correlation using a function of the prompt, early and late correlations independent of a noise floor estimate.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method for providing code tracking in a CDMA based communications receiver. In example systems and methods, a CDMA receiver, such as a GPS receiver, receives a signal and demodulates the signal to yield a digital IF signal. The digital IF signal is down-converted to a received code signal. Early, prompt and late correlation results are determined by correlating the received code signal with early, prompt and late duplicates of the received code signal. The early, prompt and late correlation results are used to calculate a code phase error using a noise-floor independent function of all three correlation results.
73 Citations
19 Claims
-
1. A method for determining a phase error of a received communication signal, the method comprising:
-
determining an early correlation result between the received communication signal and a first copy of the received communication signal; determining a prompt correlation result between the received communication signal and a second copy of the received communication signal, the second copy of the received communication signal phase-lagging the first copy by a correlator spacing; determining a late correlation result between the received communication signal and a third copy of the received communication signal, the third copy of the received communication signal phase-lagging the second copy by the correlator spacing; and using a noise-floor independent discriminator to generate an auto-correlation function having a peak correlation and calculating the phase error as a spacing between the prompt correlation and the peak correlation using a function of the prompt, early and late correlations independent of a noise floor estimate. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
-
-
5. A method for implementing a code tracking loop in a CDMA receiver, the method comprising:
-
receiving a CDMA-based signal at a receiver front-end; downconverting the CDMA-based signal to a digital IF signal; removing a carrier from the digital IF signal to generate a received code signal; determining an early correlation result between the received code signal and a first copy of the received code signal; determining a prompt correlation result between the received code signal and a second copy of the received code signal, the second copy of the received code signal phase-lagging the first copy by a correlator spacing; determining a late correlation result between the received code signal and a third copy of the received code signal, the third copy of the received code signal phase-lagging the second copy by the correlator spacing; and using a noise-floor independent discriminator to generate an auto-correlation function having a peak correlation and calculating the phase error as a spacing between the prompt correlation and the peak correlation using a function of the prompt, early and late correlations independent of a noise floor estimate. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7)
-
-
8. The method of claim 7 where:
the step of determining the early correlation result includes the steps of; - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11)
-
8-1. A method for processing a received C/A code signal in a delay-locked loop, the method comprising:
-
determining an early correlation result between the received C/A code signal and a first copy of the received C/A code signal; determining a prompt correlation result between the received C/A code signal and a second copy of the received C/A code signal, the second copy of the received C/A code signal phase-lagging the first copy by a correlator spacing; determining a late correlation result between the received C/A code signal and a third copy of the received C/A code signal, the third copy of the received C/A code signal phase-lagging the second copy by the correlator spacing; and using a noise-floor independent discriminator to generate an auto-correlation function having a peak correlation and calculating the phase error as a spacing between the prompt correlation and the peak correlation using a function of the prompt, early and late correlations independent of a noise floor estimate.
-
-
12. A system for code tracking in a CDMA system comprising:
-
a receiver front-end for receiving a CDMA-based communication signal and generating a digital IF signal; a carrier removal function for down-converting the digital IF signal to a received C/A code signal having an in-phase signal, I, and a quadrature signal, Q; a code replica generator for generating three replicas of the received C/A code signal, where the three copies of the received C/A code signal are a early code, a prompt code and a late code; six code wipeoff correlators to determine a correlation between the in-phase signal, I, and each of the early code, the prompt code and the late code, and between the quadrature signal, Q, and each of the early code, the prompt code and the late code; and a noise-floor independent delay-lock loop discriminator to calculate a prompt correlation result, an early correlation result and a late correlation result using the six correlations calculated by the six code wipeoff correlators, to generate an auto-correlation function having a peak correlation, and to calculate a phase error as a spacing between the prompt correlation result and the peak correlation using a function of the prompt, early and late correlations independent of a noise floor estimate. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15)
-
-
16. A discriminator in a delay-locked loop function comprising:
-
at least one signal input for receiving an early correlation result from correlating a received code signal and an early code, the early code being a first copy of the received code signal that phase-leads the received code signal by one correlator spacing; at least one signal input for receiving a prompt correlation result from correlating the received code signal with a prompt code, the prompt code being a second copy of the received code signal that lags the early code in phase by one correlator spacing; at least one signal input for receiving a late correlation result from correlating the received code signal with a late code, the late code being a third copy of the received code signal that lags the prompt code in phase by one correlator spacing; an auto-correlation function having a peak correlation; and a phase error detector to calculate the phase error as a spacing between the prompt correlation result and the peak correlation using a function of the prompt, early and late correlations independent of a noise floor estimate. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19)
-
Specification