Patent ID: 7885326

Claim:
A method for determining an actual pulse position in a signal, said signal comprising a plurality of successive frames, wherein each frame has length (L) and contains one pulse with width (W), a number of discrete possible pulse positions being considered within each frame which is at least L/W, the method comprising the steps of: a) sampling said signal at a sampling rate below L/W with a varying sampling phase such that the whole frame length L is covered, b) obtaining a set of samples with at least one at each of the possible pulse positions, c) correlating said set of samples with a set of one or more predetermined values forming a code which is contained as a repeated symbol in a fixed number of said successive frames, d) determining said actual pulse position from said correlation, and e) determining a code phase from said correlation, said code phase being an offset between said repeated symbol and said code, wherein step c) comprises converting said set of samples from serial data to parallel data by means of a serial-to-parallel converter and correlating said parallel data with rotated versions of said code in a correlator, thereby obtaining a set of correlation values, and wherein steps d) and e) are performed together by selecting a maximum among said set of correlation values, said maximum defining the actual pulse position and the code phase.