Pilot Measurement and Synchronization for Wireless Code Division Multiple Access Systems

Pilot measurement is a key function of a CDMA mobile terminal. This process is used to detect the presence of multipath components which may be demodulated using a RAKE receiver. The same process is also used to sense strong neighbor pilots so that the mobile may initiate a soft handoff request. Using analytic and discrete event simulation models, we have characterized the performance of the pilot measurement process. Receiver operating characteristics show that the performance under correlated fading conditions is considerably different from independent fading. The conventional multi-dwell algorithm shows only marginal improvement in performance under correlated fading conditions when dwell time is increased. We propose a measurement interleaving technique which uses time diversity to achieve performance improvements under such conditions.