Patent ID: 7324582

Claim:
A system for the reception and despreading of a direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) signal, said system comprising: an antenna array configured to receive said DSSS signal and comprising a plurality of antenna elements; a preprocessor coupled to said antenna array and configured to preprocess said DSSS signal in the time domain to produce a time-domain (TD) DSSS signal stream; a time-to-frequency-domain (TFD) transformer coupled to said preprocessor and configured to transform said TD DSSS signal stream from the time domain to the frequency domain to produce a frequency-domain (FD) DSSS signal stream; a beam former coupled to said TFD transformer, configured to form a reception beam in said DSSS signal, and configured to produce a beamed signal stream in the frequency domain from said FD DSSS signal stream; a despreader coupled to said beam former and configured to despread said beamed signal stream in the frequency domain to produce an FD despread signal stream; and a frequency-to-time-domain (FTD) transformer coupled to said despreader and configured to transform said FD despread signal stream from the frequency domain to the time domain to produce a received signal stream; and wherein: each of said antenna elements is configured to receive said DSSS signal as an DSSS elemental signal; and for one of said antenna elements, said preprocessor comprises: a digitizer coupled to said one antenna element and configured to down convert and digitize said DSSS elemental signal received by said one antenna element into an DSSS adjusted signal; and a memory coupled to said digitizer and configured to produce a portion of said TD DSSS signal stream from said DSSS adjusted signal; said memory is configured to partition said DSSS adjusted signal derived from said one antenna element into a plurality of DSSS signal-stream segments; and said preprocessor additionally comprises a multiplexer coupled to said memory and configured to route said DSSS signal-stream segments derived from said one antenna element to produce said TD DSSS signal stream.