Narrowband signal detection in correlated Rayleigh fading with a moving antenna

The performances of a single moving antenna receiver in detecting a narrowband signal in a correlated Rayleigh fading is considered. The single moving antenna captures spatial samples during antenna displacement that provides a realization of a synthetic antenna array. It is shown that there is a net processing gain in applying synthetic antenna array over keeping antenna stationary. This processing gain is subject to have uncorrelated signals at different antenna position. This paper examines the performance of synthetic array in correlated Rayleigh fading environment. An optimum detector based on Estimator-Correlator (EC) is developed and its performance is compared with that of non-coherent suboptimal Equal-Gain (EG) combiner in different channel correlation scenarios. An extensive set of measurements based on CDMA-2000 pilot signals using stationary and moving antennas are used to experimentally verify these theoretical findings.