Patent ID: 7133438

Claim:
A correlator for performing a communications acquisition, comprising: a FIFO memory having a memory input and a memory output, said FIFO memory inputting and outputting a content; a shift register with feedback for holding a received signal sequence in serial form, said shift register having register positions connected in parallel to said memory input for parallel storage of a plurality of shift register contents read out in succession, said memory output being connected in parallel with said register positions for parallel transfer of data to said shift register; a further memory for holding reference signal sequences; and a comparator for comparing the content of said FIFO memory with a content of said further memory; the correlator programmed to perform the step of: correlating a binary-coded spread sequence arriving at a frequency f and having m bits with a locally generated spread sequence by storing the received binary-coded spread sequence; splitting the stored received binary-coded spread sequence into k sections; and correlating the sections of the stored received binary-coded spread sequence at a frequency of k*f with corresponding sections of the locally generated spread sequence.