1608
8, AUGUST 2013
Matched Filter-Autocorrelation (MF-AC) for
Packet Detection in Multipath Channels
Zhenyu Xiao, Member, IEEE, Depeng Jin, Member, IEEE, Ning Ge, Member, IEEE
Abstract—In the present study, we investigate burst packet
detection in multipath environment. Conventional detectors ei-
ther cannot collect multipath energy, or combine too much noise
when collecting it. Thus, they suffer performance degradation.
A cascaded matched filter-autocorrelation (MF-AC) detector is
proposed to address this problem. By exploiting a MF, the
multipath energy is first converged within a small window equal
to the multipath delay spread; subsequently, the autocorrelator
combines the multipath energy within this window. Therefore,
the combination window is shortened, and the combined noise is
reduced. Performance comparisons show that MF-AC achieves a
significantly better performance than the conventional detectors,
with the superiority depending on the multipath delay spread.
Index Terms—Packet detection, frame detection, timing acqui-
sition, multipath, burst packet.
I. I NTRODUCTION
D ETECTION OF the arrival of a packet is the premise
of correctly demodulating the packet; thus, it plays a
cardinal role in wireless burst communications. To achieve
rapid packet detection, several assisted sequences, located in
the beginning of a preamble, are generally adopted [1]-[5].
Many efforts have been made to design appropriate detectors
and some have been proposed, including the energy detector
(ED) [5], the autocorrelation (AC) detector [1], [2], and the
cross-correlation (CC) detector [3], [4].
Among these detectors, CC works well under a single-path
channel, but in the presence of multipath, it can only collect
the energy of one single multipath component (MPC). Con-
sequently, the acquired signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) decreases,
and its detection performance is degraded. The ED and AC
detectors can collect all the multipath energy. However, too
much noise is captured undesirably, due to their large combi-
nation window equal to the duration of the assisted sequence.
This is detrimental to the detection performance.
To reduce the combined noise and improve detection perfor-
mance, we propose a cascaded matched filter-autocorrelation
(MF-AC) detector. By exploiting a MF, the multipath energy
is first converged within a small window that equals the
multipath delay spread, which is generally much smaller
than the duration of the assisted sequence; subsequently, the
Manuscript received April 24, 2013. The associate editor coordinating the
review of this letter and approving it for publication was W. Zhang.
This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (NSFC) under grant No. 61201189, the Postdoctoral Science
Foundation under grant No. 2011M500326 and 2012T50094, the National
S&T Major Project under No. 2011ZX03004-001-01, the National High Tech.
(863) Projects under Grant No. 2011AA010202, and the Research Fund of
Tsinghua University under No. 20111080992 and 20121087985.
The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua
University, Beijing 100084, P.R. China (e-mail: xiaozy06@gmail.com, xi-
aozy@tsinghua.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2013.062113.130940
1089-7798/13$31.00 
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO.
k = k + Lw
rk x k +A ⎛ Lw ⎞⎟ v
> Γ?
ℜ ⎜⎜⎜∑ x k +Ax k*+A−L ⎟⎟
⎜⎝ A=1 ⎠⎟
1
cL +1−i
L x k*+A−L
z −L ()*
Fig. 1. Diagram of the proposed cascaded MF-AC scheme.
autocorrelator combines the multipath energy within this win-
dow. With this approach, the multipath energy is combined;
meanwhile, the combination window is shortened, and thus the
combined noise is reduced. Performance comparisons show
that MF-AC outperforms the conventional detectors, and the
superiority depends on the multipath delay spread.
II. S CHEME D ESCRIPTION
Without loss of generality, several assisted sequences lo-
cated in the beginning of a preamble are used for packet
detection. A successful detection is defined as a decision of
hypothesis H1 (“YES”) when receiving the assisted sequences;
while a false alarm is a decision of hypothesis H1 when
receiving pure noise. Thus, the chip-level data at the receiver
can be expressed as
⎧
⎪ Lp −1
⎨ H : √P  h c
⎪
1 m (k−m mod L)+1 + nk ,
rk = (1)
⎪
⎪ m=0
⎩H : n ,
0 k
where k is time index, P is the average power of the received
signals, Lp is the number of MPCs, {hm |m = 0, 1, ..., Lp −1}
are complex coefficients of the multipath fading channel,
(c1 , c2 , ..., cL ) is the assisted sequence with a length of L and
L ≥ Lp , “mod” is the modulo operation because the assisted
sequence is repeatedly transmitted for several times, and nk
is the sampled Gaussian noise with mean 0 and variance σ 2 .
Note that as MF-AC has an autocorrelation operation, the
initial phase offset has no effect on its performance; thus it is
not included in this expression. Besides, similar to the above-
mentioned works, the effect of carrier-frequency offset is
implicitly neglected, because it generally causes an ignorable
phase offset within a sequence period.
Figure 1 depicts the diagram of the proposed cascaded MF-
AC scheme. It has a two-stage architecture, with the first
and second stage being a matched filter and autocorrelator,
respectively. The sampled signals rk pass through the dig-
ital matched filter with a discrete-time impulse response of
c 2013 IEEE
XIAO et al.: MATCHED FILTER-AUTOCORRELATION (MF-AC) FOR PACKET DETECTION IN MULTIPATH CHANNELS 1609

probability (FAP) and detection probability (DP) of MF-

L
AC. However, as the derivation of closed-form FAP and DP
expression is prohibitively difficult and trivial, we prefer a
semi-analytical approach, i.e., to analyze the signals after
Lp the MF and define the expressions of FAP and DP, and
subsequently achieve the numerical FAP and DP results via
simulation.

A. Channel Model
Fig. 2. Dispersion of multipath energy after matched filter and the The tapped-delay line with a tap spacing of one chip is
autocorrelation window (ACW) for the MF-AC scheme.
used to model multipath channel. Fading for each resolvable
path is assumed to remain over the period of a preamble
c[n] = √1L (cL , cL−1 , ..., c1 ), and a filtered sequence xk is
because channel response generally remains within the interval
observed. As the assisted sequence is delicately selected for of one single preamble in practice. A general Rayleigh fading
perfect autocorrelation feature, similar to the above-mentioned multipath channel is adopted, where each tap is multiplied
works, inter-symbol interference can be eliminated via the by an independent complex Gaussian random variable. The
matched filter. Subsequently, a decision w variable is achieved amplitude and phase of fading for the m-th resolvable path are
through autocorrelation: v = ( L =1 xk+ x ∗
k+−L ), where represented as |hm | and θm , respectively. |hm | is a Rayleigh
(x) represents the real part of x and Lw is the correlation random variable, and θm is an uniform random variable over
window. The decision rule is that if the decision variable v is [0, 2π).
greater than a threshold Γ, acquisition is declared; otherwise a
The commonly used multipath intensity profile (MIP) is
new decision variable is formed and tested with k = k + Lw .
either constant or exponentially decaying with a decay rate of
We further explain the mechanism of MF-AC. Figure 2
μ. With the total fading power in all of the resolvable paths
shows the dispersion of multipath energy after the matched
normalized to unity, the average fading power in each path is
filter, i.e., |xk |2 , and the autocorrelation window (ACW) of the
expressed as
proposed MF-AC detector. Before the MF, multipath energy ⎧
disperses in each chip; however, after the MF, it disperses ⎨ 1/Lp CMIP,
only within a window of Lp chips, which is actually the σm2
= E{hm h∗m } = 1 − e −μ
multipath delay spread, as shown in this figure. As the matched ⎩ e−mμ EDMIP,
1 − e−μLp
filter converges the multipath energy, the following energy
combiner only requires a window of Lw ≤ L; thus less noise is where CMIP and EDMIP stand for constant MIP and ex-
combined. Since multiple assisted sequences are transmitted, ponentially decaying MIP, respectively. For the EDMIP, we
multiple periodical multipath energy dispersions are observed assume that the last MPC has an average energy of 10
with a period of L, as shown in the figure; thus, the multipath dB below the first one. Thus, the decay rate μ is μ =
energy can be captured by autocorrelation, i.e., correlating xk − ln(10(−10/10) )/(Lp − 1).
with its delayed version by L. On the other hand, it is possible
that only a small part of the multipath energy falls within one B. DP and FAP
ACW during a test, e.g., the N -th test shown in the figure.
By exploiting the perfect auto-correlation feature of the
However, this is hardly an issue to be concerned, because a
assisted sequence, and after some manipulations, the output
large part of the multipath energy will be collected in the next
sequence of the MF can be expressed as
test, e.g., the N + 1-th test in the figure; thus, the overall ⎧
⎪ Lp −1
⎨ H : √P L  h δ[((j − 2) mod L) − m] + z ,
detection performance of MF-AC is maintained. ⎪
It is also necessary to briefly introduce the conventional 1 m j
xj =
detectors for clear comparisons with MF-AC. L The decision ⎪
⎪ m=0
∗ ⎩H : z ,
variable of the AC detector is vAC = ( =1 rk+ rk+−L ), j
L 0
while that of the ED detector is vED = L =1 |rk+ |2 . For
1
where δ[·] is the unitary impulse function, zj =
both the detectors, a new decision variable is formed with L
√1 c n
i=1 i j−i is complex Gaussian noise [6] and
k = k + L, i.e., the update window is L. The decision L L L
variable for the CC detector is vCC = |xk |2 . A new decision E{zj zj∗ } = L1 i=1 m=1 ci cm E{nj−i n∗j−m } = σ 2 . The
variable is formed with k = k + 1. Considering the multipath average SNR is thus defined as γ=P/σ 2 . It is clear that a
environment in the context of this study, the decision variable processing gain of L is achieved via correlation. Subsequently,
can be expressed as vCC = max |xk+ |2 . In such a case we have
: =1,2,...,L ⎧ √
a new decision variable is formed with k = k + L, i.e., the ⎪
⎨H : P L h + ziL+2+ ,  = 1, 2, ..., Lp
update window is also L chips. xiL+2+ =
1,
ziL+2+ ,  = Lp + 1, Lp + 2, ..., L
⎪
⎩
III. P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS H0 : ziL+2+ ,
To compare the performance of MF-AC with that of the where H1, represents the hypothesis that the assisted se-
conventional detectors, we need to achieve the false-alarm quences are received and the signals on the -th channel tap
1610 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013

L =L =2 L =L =8
w p w p
0 0
10 10
Miss Detection Probability

Miss Detection Probability

−1 −1
10 10

MF−AC, MDMIP MF−AC, MDMIP

AC, MDMIP AC, MDMIP
10
−2 CC, MDMIP 10
−2
CC, MDMIP
ED, MDMIP ED, MDMIP
MF−AC, CMIP MF−AC, CMIP
AC, CMIP AC, CMIP
CC, CMIP CC, CMIP
ED, CMIP ED, CMIP
−3 −3
10 10
−10 −5 0 5 −10 −5 0 5
γ (dB) γ (dB)

L = L = 16 L = L = 64
w p w p
0 0
10 10
Miss Detection Probability

Miss Detection Probability

−1 −1
10 10

MF−AC, MDMIP MF−AC, MDMIP

AC, MDMIP AC, MDMIP
−2 −2
10 CC, MDMIP 10 CC, MDMIP
ED, MDMIP ED, MDMIP
MF−AC, CMIP MF−AC, CMIP
AC, CMIP AC, CMIP
CC, CMIP CC, CMIP
ED, CMIP ED, CMIP
−3 −3
10 10
−10 −5 0 5 −10 −5 0 5
γ (dB) γ (dB)

Fig. 3. Performance comparison between MF-AC and the conventional detectors. The FAP constant is Cf a = 10−3 , Lw = Lp , and L = 64.

are filtered out. When  > Lp the channel coefficient is zero;
thus only noise is observed.
It is emphasized that in hypothesis H1 , the signals on the
first several MPCs will come into the ACW first, as shown in
Fig. 2, followed by the signals on the left MPCs in the next
tests, i.e., as a first-arrive-first-observed order. The number
of MPCs that come into the first ACW is uncertain, and
can be any integer from 1 to Lw . As there are L/Lw 
ACWs or tests within a sequence period in hypothesis H1 , any
declaration of “YES” is a successful detection. Therefore, a
successful detection is defined as the one where there is at least
one decision of H1 within consecutive L/Lw  tests when a
packet arrives, and the ACW of the first test contains uncertain
number of first-arriving MPCs. Correspondingly, a false alarm
is defined as the one where there is at least one decision of
H1 within consecutive L/Lw  tests when a packet does not
arrive, i.e., only noise is received.
Let k = iL + 2 − m, where m is a random integer
uniformly distributed in {0, 1, ..., Lw − 1}. Subsequently, we
can formulate the DP and FAP as in (2) and (3), respectively.
As the closed-form expressions of DP and FAP are difficult
to derive, we adopt the simulation approach to obtain the
numerical results in the next section.
IV. P ERFORMANCE C OMPARISON
In this section, the performance of MF-AC is compared
with that of AC, CC, and ED. Simulation approach is adopted
to achieve the numerical results, based on the DP and FAP
definition presented in (2) and (3). The threshold is set
according to the Neyman-Pearson (NP) criterion [7], which
is to maximize DP under a constraint that FAP is not larger
than a specified constant Cf a .
Fig. 3 shows the comparison results between MF-AC and
the conventional detectors, in the case of Cf a = 10−3 and
L = 64. The ACW Lw is set equal to Lp . Different numbers of
MPCs are considered. It is observed that MF-AC significantly
outperforms the other detectors under both CMIP and EDMIP
channel. The superiority is more evident when Lp is smaller,
and a SNR gain of more than 2 dB over the other detectors
can be observed for small Lp , e.g., for Lp not larger than
8. When Lp = 16, an SNR gain of more than 1 dB can
still be observed. As Lp increases, the SNR gain of MF-AC
becomes less, and AC and ED gradually become better than
CC, due to collecting multipath energy. Finally, when Lp is
sufficiently large, MF-AC gets close to AC. In particular, when
Lp = L, MF-AC degrades to AC, because the ACW is L,
the same as that of AC. It is clearly shown in the figure
that when Lw = Lp = L, MF-AC has exactly the same
performance as AC. On the other hand, as Lp increases, the
performance of AC and CC improve, because the fading effect
of the combined multipath energy becomes less, but that of
ED deteriorates, because energy disperses in one single MPC
decreases. This result suggests that combining of multipath
energy is necessary in the presence of multipath. It is noted
XIAO et al.: MATCHED FILTER-AUTOCORRELATION (MF-AC) FOR PACKET DETECTION IN MULTIPATH CHANNELS 1611

Lw −1
L

1   w

PD = Pr max  xk++ρLw x∗k++ρLw −L |H1 >Γ (2)

Lw m=0 ρ=0,1,...,L/Lw −1
=1
L

 w
∗
PF A = Pr max  zk++ρLw zk++ρL w −L
>Γ (3)
ρ=0,1,...,L/Lw −1
=1

0
10
that the cost of the superiority of MF-AC over the other
detectors is higher computation complexity. Compared with
AC, which has roughly equivalent complexity with ED, MF-
AC has an additional MF module, while compared with CC,

Miss Detection Probability

−1
10
MF-AC has an additional autocorrelator module. Sub−optimal
range of Lw
On the other hand, it is intuitive that if Lp is known,
the optimum ACW is Lw = Lp in terms of one-short
detection performance, i.e., ρ = 0 and m = 0 in (2) and −2
10

(3), because all the multipath energy is collected without γ=−5 dB, CMIP
Left side γ=−5 dB, EDMIP
combing additional noise. To demonstrate this, we consider γ=−2 dB, CMIP
the CMIP model for simplification. The performance in Right side γ=−2 dB, EDMIP

the case of Lw > Lp is definitely poorer than that in the

−3
10
5 10 15 20 25 30
case of Lw = Lp , because equivalent multipath energy is Lw

collected for both the cases, but more noise is combined for
the former one. Regarding the performance in the case of Fig. 4. The detection performance of MF-AC with respect to Lw . Cf a =
10−3 , Lp = 12 and L = 64.
Lw≤ Lp , the decision variable in hypothesis H1 writesv =

L w √
√

 P Lh + ziL+2+ P Lh∗ + z(i−1)L+2+
∗
, V. C ONCLUSIONS
=1
and we have E(v) = P LLw /Lp and D(v) = Lw λ ∝ Lw .
Δ In the multipath environment, the conventional detectors
By exploiting √Gaussian approximation, we achieve suffer performance degradation, because they either cannot
Γ = Q−1 (Cf a ) Lw σ 2 according to (3), where Q−1 (x) collect multipath energy, or combine too much noise when
is the inverse Q  function. Subsequently, we obtain collecting it. The MF-AC detector has thus been proposed
  −1 √
to address this problem. By converging multipath energy
Q (Cf a )σ2 −P L Lw /Lp
PD = Q √ Γ−E(v)
= Q √
λ
. It
D(v)
is clear that under the condition of Lw ≤ Lp , PD is
maximized when Lw = Lp . Since the average detection
performance shown in (2) and (3) is dominant by this
one-short performance, Lw should be set to Lp to achieve a
quasi-optimal performance 1 .
Fig. 4 shows the detection performance with respect to Lw
under the condition that Cf a = 10−3 , Lp = 12, and L = 64.
When Lw = Lp , a quasi-optimal performance is achieved for
all these curves. A value of Lw close to Lp also achieves a
close-to-optimal performance, i.e., a similar sub-optimal range
of Lw exists for different MIPs and different SNRs. This
suggests that Lw should be set to Lp , and even when Lp
is obtained via estimation with a small error, a sub-optimal
performance can still be achieved, which shows the robustness
of MF-AC. Moreover, the sub-optimal range on the left side of
Lp is significantly wider than that on the right side, as shown
in the figure. This implies that, for MF-AC, eliminating the
undesired noise is more essential than combining of larger
multipath energy, because moderately reducing the ACW
can also achieve a close-to-optimal performance, but slightly
increasing the ACW will immediately degrade performance.
This is exactly our motivation to propose MF-AC to shorten
ACW and reduce noise for performance improvement.
1 It is prohibitively hard to derive and prove the strictly-optimal value for
Lw . In fact, according to the following simulation results, Lp is basically the
optimal value of Lw .
and shortening ACW, the combined noise is reduced while
having the multipath energy collected. Performance com-
parisons showed that MF-AC significantly outperforms the
conventional detectors, especially when Lp , i.e., the number
of MPCs, is not large. Moreover, it has been shown that the
ACW of MF-AC should be set as Lw = Lp , and a value of
Lw close to Lp also achieves a close-to-optimal performance.
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