An adaptive correlator receiver for direct-sequence spread-spectrum communication

This paper presents a novel receiver for direct sequence spread-spectrum signals over channels containing interference and multipath. The receiver employs an adaptive correlator that jointly detects the transmitted data, removes interference, and compensates for multipath. The optimum correlation vector is derived by determining the Wiener vector that minimizes the mean squared error (MSE) between the transmitted data bit and the correlator output. For an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, the optimal correlation vector is the spreading sequence used by the transmitter. For interference and multipath channels, the optimal correlation vector will suppress the interference and combine the multipath while optimizing the detection of the transmitted data bit. The paper presents analytical and simulation results which illustrate the bit-error rate (BER) performance of the receiver in multipath and narrowband interference. Additionally, simulation results are presented illustrating the convergence performance of the receiver when the tap weights are adjusted using either the least mean square (LMS) or recursive least squares (RLS) adaptive algorithms.