Patent ID: 8325856

Claim:
An acquisition module, comprising: a coherent correlator configured in hardware device to receive a transmission having a pilot signal and correlate the received transmission with a local copy of the pilot signal to produce a first output a delayed correlator configured to delay the first output and correlate the first output with the delayed first output to produce a second output; and a state machine configured to accumulate a first number of high energy peaks in the second output during a sampling period and detect the pilot signal by comparing a magnitude of the accumulated high energy peaks with a magnitude threshold and the first number with a hit threshold and a miss threshold, wherein the first number corresponds to a number of times the high energy peaks exceed the magnitude threshold, and wherein the state machine is further configured to: declare that the pilot signal was detected when the first number exceeds the hit threshold, continue accumulating high energy peaks if the first number is between the miss threshold and the hit threshold, and restart pilot signal acquisition when the first number is below the miss threshold.