Channel profiling for frequency-hopping direct-sequence spread spectrum systems

Abstract

Methods and systems for low-complexity channel profiling in frequency-hopped (FH) direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) wireless communication systems are described. An example system includes a receiver configured to receive, over a channel, a FH DSSS signal associated with multiple frequency hops, and a processor configured to perform, using a first subset of the multiple frequency hops, a timing acquisition operation using a full correlative processing operation. The receiver is then configured to perform, subsequent to the timing acquisition operation and using a second subset of the multiple frequency hops, a predominant delay estimation operation, where estimating predominant channel delays excludes using the full correlative processing operation, and finally compute, based on an output of the predominant delay estimation operation, a channel estimate comprising an estimate of each of a number of channel taps that represent the channel, and where each channel tap estimate comprises a gain, a phase, and a delay.