%0 Journal Article %T Performance of Narrowband Signal Detection under Correlated Rayleigh Fading Based on Synthetic Array %A Ali Broumandan %A John Nielsen %A G¨¦rard Lachapelle %J International Journal of Antennas and Propagation %D 2009 %I Hindawi Publishing Corporation %R 10.1155/2009/610109 %X The performance of a single moving antenna receiver in detecting a narrowband signal under correlated Rayleigh fading is considered. The spatial motion of the antenna during signal capture provides a realization of a synthetic antenna array. As shown, there is a net processing gain obtained by using a synthetic antenna array compared to the equivalent static antenna in Rayleigh fading environments subject to constant processing time. The performance analysis is based on average Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) metrics for design parameters of probability of detection (£¿£¿£¿£¿) and probability of false alarm (£¿£¿£¿£¿£¿£¿). An optimum detector based on Estimator-Correlator (EC) is developed, and its performance is compared with that of suboptimal Equal-Gain (EG) combiner in different channel correlation scenarios. It is shown that in moderate channel correlation scenarios the detection performance of EC and EG is identical. The sensitivity of the proposed method to knowledge of motion parameters is also investigated. An extensive set of measurements based on CDMA-2000 pilot signals using the static antenna and synthetic array are used to experimentally verify these theoretical findings. 1. Introduction In a wireless mobile communication system, signals propagate from the transmitter to the receiver over multiple paths resulting in multipath fading. When there is no line of sight (LOS) path available from the transmitter and an antenna is located in a dense scattering environment (e.g., indoor and urban environments), the multipath fading appears to be spatially random conforming to Rayleigh statistics [1, 2]. A characteristic of multipath fading is fluctuations in received signal strength as a function of spatial dimensions, which results in signal reception problems for a static antenna. The use of multiple antennas can alleviate the fading problem to some degree by providing a means of diversity gain [3¨C5]. Diversity techniques are established based on receiving statistically independent signals on each diversity antenna denoted as diversity branch. In practice, this may be implemented by utilizing spatially separated antennas in dense multipath environments, which results in spatial diversity [6¨C8] or by utilizing antennas with different polarizations that map into polarization diversity [9]. A performance comparison of the spatial diversity and the polarization diversity in Rayleigh fading environment is investigated in [10]. The performance of a diversity system can be characterized by the correlation coefficient value among diversity branches. In the multipath %U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2009/610109/