Abstract:
In this paper, we investigate the asymptotic performance of timing 
acquisition systems having fixed dwell time in multipath fading 
channels. We isolate the detrimental effect of the multipath channel 
fading on the acquisition performance by considering the asymptotic 
performance as the average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) increases 
without bound. We find that for any threshold such that the average 
probability of false alarm is less than a given tolerance, the channel 
fading results in a lower bound on the asymptotic average probability 
of miss which is non-trivial for a variety of fading scenarios. We 
consider a threshold-based direct-sequence spread-spectrum signal 
acquisition system and find that the detrimental effect of channel 
fading on asymptotic acquisition performance, albeit non-trivial, is 
not very significant. On the contrary, for threshold-based 
ultra-wideband signal acquisition systems, the detrimental effect of 
channel fading is significant for both signals with direct-sequence and 
time-hopping spreading, and is found to be worse in the latter case.