724

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 48, NO. 3, MAY 1999

Effects of Cell Correlations in a Matched-Filter PN Code Acquisition for Direct-Sequence Spread-Spectrum Systems
Wern-Ho Sheen, Member, IEEE, Jiun-Kai Tzeng, and Ching-Kae Tzou
Abstract Rapid pseudonoise (PN) code acquisition with matched-lter correlators has been very popular in directsequence (DS) spread-spectrum systems. Conventionally, the analysis of this acquisition method is based on the assumption that the detections among cells are independent. However, there may be strong correlations among cell detections for the case that the cell size is less than a chip duration. In this paper, the mean acquisition time performance of the acquisition method is analyzed with the cell correlations being taken into account. Numerical results show that depending on the threshold value and other system parameters, the effect of cell correlations may be over 20% of the mean acquisition time for signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of practical interest. The analytical results are substantiated by computer simulations. Index Terms DS spread spectrum, matched lter, PN code acquisition.

I. INTRODUCTION

N DIRECT-SEQUENCE (DS) spread-spectrum systems, pseudonoise (PN) code acquisition aligns the received and locally generated PN codes to within a small range of timing error before a code tracking loop can netune and maintain a precise timing synchronism of the two PN codes. (The range of permissible timing error is often determined by the pull-in range of the code tracking loop.) Rapid PN code acquisition has been the most challenging work faced by a DS spreadspectrum receiver [1][3]. PN code acquisition for DS spread-spectrum systems has been drawing much research attention in the past [1][20]. Acquisition methods such as multiple-dwell serial search acquisition [1][6], serial search acquisition with sequential detection [1][3], [7][9], serial (or parallel) search acquisition based on matched-lter (MF) correlators [10][15], and acquisition with recursion-aided sequential estimation [16], [17] have been investigated extensively in the literature. Of these, the method based on MF correlators has a faster acquisition speed at the expense of a larger system complexity for a large PN code period, as opposed to other types of acquisition
Manuscript received July 7, 1996; revised February 25, 1997. This work was supported in part by the National Science Council, Taiwan, R.O.C., under NSC Grant 85-2213-E-194-001. W.-H. Sheen is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan, R.O.C. J.-K. Tzeng is with the National Space Program Ofce, Science-Based Industrial Park, Hsin-Chu 300, Taiwan, R.O.C. C.-K. Tzou is with the TranSwitch Corporation, Taipei 13F-3, Taiwan, R.O.C. Publisher Item Identier S 0018-9545(99)01043-9.

methods. In this study, we are concerned with the performance analysis of the serial search PN code acquisition based on MF correlators. In a serial search PN code acquisition, the time uncertainty , is divided into cells, of the incoming code, denoted as and the cells are searched on a cell-by-cell basis until true code acquisition is accomplished (timing error is within the permissible range).1 Quite often, the cell size is taken as a fraction of a chip duration. Therefore, there are more than one cell at which true acquisition is possible. These types of cells cells, and the set of all cells will be will be denoted as region. All other cells for which the true denoted as the region, acquisition is not possible will be denoted as the cells. For the and the cells in the region be denoted as the acquisition method based on MF correlators, since the decision whether a particular cell is a correct cell (true acquisition) can be made in a duration of cell size, the acquisition speed is much faster than other types of acquisition methods, for example, the method of multiple-dwell acquisition [2], [3]. Conventionally, the performance analysis of the PN code acquisition based on MF correlators assumes that the detections between cells are independent. Then, a transfer function and/or a time domain approach can be employed to obtain the mean and variance and/or the probability density function (pdf) of the acquisition time [1][3], [10], [18][20]. However, as to be shown, the assumption of independency between cell detections is only valid for the case when the cell size is equal to the chip duration. For cell sizes less than one chip duration, the detections between cells may be strongly correlated. In this paper, the mean acquisition time performance of the acquisition method is analyzed with the cell correlations being taken into account. The results show that, depending on the threshold values and other system parameters, the effect of cell correlations may be over 20% of the mean acquisition time for signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of practical interest. Computer simulations have been used to substantiate the analytical results. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the serial search PN code acquisition based on MF correlators. Section III describes a state transition diagram with which the mean acquisition time can be evaluated. In Section IV, the expression for the mean acquisition time is derived, and some numerical examples
1 For

simplicity, the frequency uncertainty will not be considered.

00189545/99$10.00 1999 IEEE

SHEEN et al.: EFFECTS OF CELL CORRELATIONS IN PN CODE ACQUISITION

725

Fig. 1. A typical matched-lter detector for DS PN code acquisitions.

are shown in Section V. Finally, conclusions are given in Section VI. II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION A typical structure for DS PN code acquisition based on MF correlators is shown in Fig. 1. The received signal is (1) and are the carrier power, frequency and where is a maximum length sequence with phase, respectively, nonreturn-to-zero shaping function, is the timing information is additive white Gaussian needed to be acquired, and noise (AWGN) with one-sided power spectra density (PSD) of watts/hertz. For simplicity, the effects of data modulation and frequency shift will not be considered. The received signal is rst downconverted to the inphase and quadrature s, the inphase and components. After integration by quadrature signals are sampled and correlated, respectively, with an MF correlator as shown in Fig. 2, where and denotes the chip duration. The samples s at the instants of are taken every with The MF correlators perform the correlation between the incoming and locally generated PN codes. Each -stage tapped delay line with a tap MF uses an s, where is the period of the maximum length spacing of is the locally sequence (full period correlation). generated PN sequence to be dened later. The MF correlator is used to compare outputs are squared, and the sum For one-dwell systems, if exceeds with a threshold then the cell being tested is considered as the threshold a correct cell and the synchronization process is transferred to the code tracking. For two-dwell systems, however, the acquisition enters the second dwell (verication mode) after .2 As an example, an active correlator with the excess of is assumed for the a second threshold comparison verication mode, although some other schemes may also be employed, for example, the coincidence detector [10]. If the is exceeded again, then the cell is considered threshold as a correct cell. Otherwise, the cell will be considered as an incorrect one, and a new cell will be searched and tested [1][3]. This means that the rst sample in the tap delay lines
2 The extension of the proposed method to more than two-dwell systems is straightforward.

Fig. 2. The matched-lter correlator.

will be shifted out and the new coming one will be moved in, and the correlation and threshold comparisons repeat. Many strategies can be used for searching a new cell [2], [3]. Here, only the straight line search strategy will be used as an example for evaluating the mean acquisition time. The case of returning false alarm will be considered which means that the tracking loop can always detect the false alarm after some time, called the penalty time, and return the synchronization to the code acquisition. The penalty time will with be modeled as a xed value and denoted by This model is a bit simplied. Nevertheless, it is commonly employed in the study of acquisition systems. and By using the chip synchronous model [8], i.e., , the inphase and quadrature outputs at the assume that MF correlators are given by

(2) and

(3) respectively, where is the maximum length sequence, is the integer

726

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 48, NO. 3, MAY 1999

part of , and and independent Gaussian noise with

are base-band mutually and

for a large Since are Gaussian random variables, uncorrelation implies independency. Therefore, the decision variables (13) depend only on Conventionally, the performance analysis of the rapid acquisition using MF correlators is based on the assumption of independency between cell detections. As shown in (12), this In the following, a new method is is not the case for proposed to analyze the performance of mean acquisition time that takes the correlations between cell detections into account. III. STATE TRANSITION DIAGRAM

for denotes the expectation value of the random variable From (2) and (3), we have (4) and (5) where (6) and (7) Note that

A state transition diagram will be rst devised to describe the acquisition process. Then, the mean acquisition time will be evaluated by using a time-domain approach. In the state states, which are transition diagram, there are total to , respectively. Each state is associated denoted as , except that the state with a cell in the time uncertainty (or ACQ) is used to denote the acquisition state. The region contains cells which are denoted as to The state is the rst cell. As shown in (12), depends on the detections the detection at the cell (state) To take this dependency at the cells substates, into account, each state is divided into with each substate dened by

otherwise (8) In (8), we have used the property of the periodic autocorrelation of a maximum length sequence. From (4) and (5), it can be shown that

(9) and

(10) otherwise or where correlation coefcient Therefore, from (8) and (10), the

(11) is approximated by (12)

(14) , , and are to where and when denote the events of respectively. In (14), is the decimal detecting the cell representation of the state content where the left-most bit is the most signicant bit. The state transition diagram for the is shown in Fig. 3. As can be seen, there are case of cells, and for each substate in the region, there is ve Note that in the a transition to the acquisition state region, two transitions have been associated with the substate and pairs This is attributed to that if at the rst dwell, then two events could happen. One is that is exceeded, and the system enters the second threshold the tracking mode. The other is that the second threshold is not exceeded, and a new cell is searched and tested. The acquisition process can be initiated at any state, say , with As to be shown, it is appropriate to use the probability of as the starting substate. substate The next step is to dene transition gains in the state transition diagram such that the mean acquisition time can be evaluated. To this end, we dene the transition gains as the transition gains for follows. For in the region are dened the substate pair is exceeded) by (the event that (15)

SHEEN et al.: EFFECTS OF CELL CORRELATIONS IN PN CODE ACQUISITION

727

and (16) respectively, and for the transition gain is (17) In (15)(17), is the false alarm where is the originating probability for the rst dwell given that and are the false substate of the transition, and alarm probability and dwell time of the second dwell. Since the channel is stationary, the false alarm probabilities and are independent of the cell index For the substate in the region, the transition gain is pair dened as (18) for and is dened as (19) respectively. In the above, is for the detection probability for the rst dwell given that is the originating substate of the transition, and is the detection probability for the second dwell when detecting For the region, the detection probability is a the cell Recall that for each substate function of the tested cell region, there is a transition to the acquisition state in the (or ACQ). The transition gains for these transitions are given by (20) Since the transition gains are not a function of time, the state transition diagram describes a stationary Markov chain. Table I and for the shows the general expressions of In the table, and are to denote the source case of and destination substates of a transition, respectively. For the and considered active correlator, the probabilities are given by the general expression of (21) is the decision variable for the verication mode. where for some in the substate Note that if , i.e., the acquisition process enters the tracking mode for one-dwell systems or enters the verication mode for two-dwell systems when detecting the cell the detection of the cell is independent of the detections for At the very beginning of the of the cell acquisition process, since there are no detections preceding as the starting cell, it is appropriate to use the substate the starting substate as shown in Fig. 3. From Fig. 3 and Table I, we can see that the substates and can be combined as one for the case of This type of combination is always possible for and will largely reduce the complexity of the state transition diagram. For example, only 5 rather than 16 substates are The simplied state required for the case of is shown in transition diagram for the case of for Fig. 4, where the substates have been renamed as with

TABLE I GENERAL EXPRESSIONS FOR THE Pd ji

( ) AND
l

f ji

IN

FIG. 3

Fig. 3. The state transition diagram with

1=1 3

= :

IV. MEAN ACQUISITION TIME With the dened transition diagram, the expression for the mean acquisition time can now be derived. A time domain approach will be used for the derivation. As evident in Fig. 4, one needs to know the probabilities and elapsed time for every in visit of the substates order to calculate the exact mean acquisition time. However, this is extremely difcult if not impossible even for Instead, if the correlations from the region to the region can be neglected, then, as to be shown, the calculation of the is mean acquisition time will be largely simplied. Since usually quite large in practical applications, the effect due to this simplication will be very small (see Section V). Once as an example. Then, without considering again take to regions, the state transition the correlations from the diagram Fig. 4 becomes the one shown in Fig. 5. Note that and have degenerated to one and two the cells substates, respectively. In addition, the general expressions for and are different from those dened in Fig. 4. The new expressions are given in Table II.

728

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 48, NO. 3, MAY 1999

TABLE II GENERAL EXPRESSIONS FOR THE Pd ji M

( 0 5) AND

d ji

( 0 4) IN FIG. 4
M

The average dwell time from state to given that acquisition is reached during the state region. Let be the next pass of the dwell time for the particular state transition sequence Then

Fig. 4. The simplied state transition diagram with

1=1 3

= :

(23) The average dwell time from the starting state to the state For (the region) (24) where

(25) and

Fig. 5. The simplied state transition diagram for no correlations from the H0 to H1 region with = :

1=13

(26)

To derive the mean acquisition time, the following denitions are useful. The detection probability for one passes through the region. Let denote a sequence of state tranand the nal state and sitions with the initial state denote the probability of this particular sequence of transitions. Then, the overall detection probability is given by (22) denote the set of all possible sequences where and nal state of state transitions with the initial state

and with In (25) and (26), and denote the transition probability and dwell time for the transitions associated with the substate pair respectively. Recall that there may be two transitions and that associated with the substate pair and are independent of with For (the region) (27)

SHEEN et al.: EFFECTS OF CELL CORRELATIONS IN PN CODE ACQUISITION

729

where

For

(28) is the average dwell time from to and (35) and , where with the last term is due to the fact that it is possible to acquire region when the code phase without searching through the Consequently, the overall mean is given by acquisition time (36) is given in the Appendix to A simpler example with explain the derivation of (33) more clearly. The nal step to complete the analysis is to obtain the and From probabilities Tables II and III, we know that and take the general forms of (37) or (31) is the average dwell time for missing the region and (32) (39) is the zeroth-order modied Bessel function of where , and is dened the rst kind, in (9). Therefore, (37) can be evaluated as where known that (38) is given in (13). In (37), it is well is chi-square distributed with the pdf given by

(29) is used in calculating The average dwell time to the state itself (no from the state region). acquisition occurs when passing through It can be shown that

(30) where

is used in calculating With these denitions, the mean acquisition time for the is given as follows. For case that the starting cell is

(40) where (41) is the Marcum generalized function, which can be evaluated very efciently by the saddle point integration method [21]. then (40) becomes For (42) (33) From (33), it is easy to see that and take the For active correlators, the probabilities form of (37) and can be evaluated similarly as in (40). Unfortunately, there is no efcient method to calculate (38) due to that are correlated central or noncentral chi-square random variables. To the best of our knowledge, for central chi-square cases, one way to do it is to express the joint pdf of in a convergent innite series

(34)

730

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 48, NO. 3, MAY 1999

Fig. 6. Effects of the cell correlations on the performance of mean acquisition time.

Fig. 7. Comparisons of analytical and simulation results for the cases of = ; K ; and b dB.

1=13

= 127

=0

and then the probability of the form can be evaluated numerically [22], [23]. However, for noncentral chi-square cases, no such convergent innite series have been found in the open literature. Moreover, since a numerical integration is still needed in the above innite series method, the method would not be easier than the Monte Carlo integration employed in this study. Note that all conditional probabilities for the thresholds of interest can be found by using one integration. This is important in the process of nding the optimum threshold. Let (43) where or and we have (44) By using (44), (4) and (5) become Since

V. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES In this section, numerical examples are used to show the effects of cell correlations. For simplicity, only one-dwell is employed for all systems will be considered.3 numerical examples in this section. Monte-Carlo integration with 10 samples have been used to obtain the probability (38). The mean acquisition time is evaluated only for the case , i.e., the worst case. of Fig. 6 shows typical examples of the effects of cell correis the time uncertainty of the incoming lations. Recall that is dened by code. In the gures, the SNR (47) As expected, the effects of the cell correlations are generally Also, at the expense of a more signicant for a smaller larger system complexity, a better performance is obtained with a smaller (larger ) due to the fact that there are more region. However, as evident in the gure, the cells in the less than performance improvement becomes smaller with In 1/3. Similar results are observed for the cases of Fig. 7, computer simulations are used to verify the analytical As can be seen, analytical results for the case of results agree very well with the simulation ones, and, therefore, to regions it is veried that the correlations from the can be safely neglected. In our simulations, the sequence is , and generated by the primitive polynomial 500 acquisitions are averaged to obtain the mean acquisition time. Fig. 8 shows the relative acquisition time error for the case and with various SNRs and s. The of relative acquisition time error is dened as (48)
3 For two-dwell systems, since the verication process provides independent samples, the effects of cell correlations may be smaller than those presented here.

(45) and are approximately It can be shown that for a large and, hence, uncorrelated, if they are independent Gaussian variables. Equation (45) can be used to efciently generate the random variables Taking as an example, the Monte-Carlo integration can be used to calculate the probability

(46) by generating the random variables ing to (45) and (13). and accord-

SHEEN et al.: EFFECTS OF CELL CORRELATIONS IN PN CODE ACQUISITION

731

Fig. 9. The state transition diagram with

1 = 1=2 (H1 region).

parameters. As can be seen, for an SNR larger than 0 dB, and over 10% and 20% of errors are observed for respectively. For 5%8% of errors are observed for the same range of SNRs. In addition, the effects of cell correlation are not sensitive to the values of
Fig. 8. Example relative acquisition time errors. TABLE III THE OPTIMUM THRESHOLD, THE MINIMUM MEAN ACQUISITION TIME, AND THE ASSOCIATED RELATIVE ERROR FOR VARIOUS SYSTEM PARAMETERS

VI. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, a new method has been proposed to analyze the matched-lter PN code acquisition for DS spread-spectrum systems. By using a time-domain approach along with a state transition diagram, the mean acquisition time performance can be evaluated with the cell correlations being taken into account (the effects of the cell correlations have been neglected in the previous analyses). Numerical results show that: 1) the effects of the cell correlations are more signicant for a smaller cell size and/or a larger SNR; 2) for SNRs of practical interest, over 10% and 20% acquisition time error and (at the optimum thresholds) are observed for , respectively; and 3) the effects of cell correlations at the optimum thresholds are quite insensitive to the value of penalty time.

APPENDIX DERIVATION OF (33) is used In this Appendix, a simple example with to explain the derivation of (33) more clearly. Fig. 9 depicts is used to denote the state transition diagram, where the transition gain for easy presentation. Using our notation, for the rst pass, the average acquisition time (if acquired) is region) given by ( in the where is the mean acquisition time without considering the cell correlations. As can be seen, the larger the SNR, the larger the relative acquisition time error. Also, over 20% of errors are observed. Note that the largest relative error does not necessarily occur at the optimum threshold. (The optimum thresholds in the gure can be read from Table III.) Once again, the result shows that the effects of the cell correlations are more signicant for a smaller Table III shows the optimum threshold, minimum mean for various system acquisition time, and the associated

where

and For the second pass, the

732

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 48, NO. 3, MAY 1999

average acquisition time (if acquired) is

Similarly, the average acquisition time for the third pass is

[16] R. B. Ward, Acquisition of pseudonoise signals by sequential estimation, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-13, pp. 475483, Dec. 1965. [17] R. B. Ward and K. P. Yiu, Acquisition of PN signals by recursion aided sequential estimation, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-25, pp. 784794, Aug. 1977. [18] H. Meyr and G. Poltzer, Performance analysis for general PN spread spectrum acquisition techniques, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-31, pp. 13171319, Dec. 1983. [19] V. M. Jovanovic, Analysis of strategies for serial-search spread spectrum code acquisitiondirect approach, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 36, pp. 12081220, Nov. 1988. [20] S. M. Pan, D. E. Dodds, and S. Kumar, Acquisition time distribution for spread spectrum receivers, IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., vol. 8, pp. 800807, June 1990. [21] C. W. Helstrom, Approximate evaluation of detection probabilities in radar and optical communications, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. AES-14, pp. 630640, July 1978. [22] A. S. Krishnamoorthy and M. Parthasarathy, A multivariate Gammatype distribution, Ann. Math. Statist., vol. 22, pp. 549557, 1951. [23] T. Royen, Expansions for the multivariate Chi-square distribution, J. Multivariate Anal., vol. 38, pp. 213232, 1991.

and so on. Summing all passes is exactly (33). REFERENCES

[1] J. K. Holmes, Coherent Spread Spectrum Systems. New York: Wiley, 1982. [2] M. K. Simon, J. K. Omura, R. A. Scholtz, and B. K. Levitt, Spread Spectrum Communications, vols. IIII. MD: Computer Science, 1985. [3] R. L. Peterson, R. E. Ziemer, and D. E. Borth, Introduction to SpreadSpectrum Communications. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995. [4] G. F. Sage, Serial synchronization of pseudonoise systems, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-12, pp. 123 and 127, Dec. 1964. [5] J. K. Holmes and C. C. Chen, Acquisition time performance of PN spread-spectrum systems, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-25, pp. 778783, Aug. 1977. [6] D. M. DiCarlo and C. L. Weber, Multiple dwell serial search: Performance and application to direct sequence code acquisition, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-31, pp. 650659, May 1983. [7] Y. H. Lee and S. Tantaratana, Sequential acquisition of PN sequences for DS/SS communications: design and performance, IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., vol. 10, pp. 750759, May 1992. [8] K. K. Chawla and D. V. Sarwate, Acquisition on PN sequences in chip synchronous DS/SS systems using a random sequence model and the SPRT, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 42, pp. 23252334, June 1994. [9] S. Tantaratana, A. W. Lam, and P. J. Vincent, Noncoherent sequential acquisition of PN sequences for DS/SS communication with/without channel fading, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 43, pp. 17381746, Feb./Mar./Apr. 1995 [10] A. Polydoros and C. L. Weber, A unied approach to serial search spread-spectrum code acquisitionPart II: A matched lter receiver, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-32, pp. 550560, May 1984. [11] Y. T. Su, Rapid code acquisition algorithms employing PN matched lters, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 36, pp. 724733, June 1988. [12] U. Cheng, Performance of a class of parallel spread spectrum code acquisition schemes in the presence of data modulation, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 36, pp. 596604, May 1988. [13] E. Sourour and S. C. Gupta, Direct-sequence spread-spectrum parallel acquisition in a fading mobile channel, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 38, pp. 992998, July 1990. [14] B. B. Ibrahim and A. H. Aghvami, Direct sequence spread spectrum matched lter acquisition in frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels, IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., vol. 12, pp. 885890, June 1994. [15] V. M. Jovanovic and E. S. Sousa, Analysis of noncoherent correlation in DS/BPSK spread spectrum acquisition, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 43, pp. 565573, Feb./Mar./Apr. 1995.

Wern-Ho Sheen (S89M91) received the B.S.E.E. degree from the National Taiwan Institute of Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1982, the M.S.E.E. degree from the National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, in 1984, and the Ph.D. degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1991. From 1984 to 1993, he was with Telecommunication Laboratories, Taiwan, where he was mainly involved in the projects of personal communications and basic rate ISDN. Since 1993, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. His research interests include adaptive signal processing, spread-spectrum communications, and personal and mobile radio systems.

Jiun-Kai Tzeng was born in Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., on August 12, 1972. He received the B.S. degree in 1994 from the National ChiaoTung University, Taiwan, and the M.S. degree in 1996 from the National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan. Since October 1996, he has been with the National Space Program Ofce, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. His current research interests include spread-spectrum communications and satellite communications.

Ching-Kae Tzou was born in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, R.O.C. He received the B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. degrees from the National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan, in 1984 and 1986, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in system electrical engineering from the University of South California, Los Angeles. During 19931996, he was with the Department of Communication Technology at Computer and Communication Laboratories, Industry of Technology Research Institute, Taiwan, where he worked on personal wireless communication system design. In 1997, he became a Senior Engineer in the VLSI Group, TranSwitch Corporation, Taipei, Taiwan, and was promoted to Principle Engineer in May of the same year, working on ASIC design for telecommunications. His research interests include wireless communication system design, digital signal processing, and ASIC design for applications in communication systems. Dr. Tzou received the Phi Tau Phi Award from the Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Society, Taiwan, in 1986.