A Dual-Hierarchy Synchronization Method for Signal Preambles with High Detection Rates for Satellite-Based ADS-B Receivers with Different Sensitivities

Existing methods are unable to achieve high detection rates and low false alarm rates of satellite-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) signal preambles at extremely low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) using limited on-star resources. In this paper, a dual-hierarchy synchronization method is proposed, including a first-level coarse synchronization and a second-level fine synchronization. The coarse synchronization process involves three steps: (1) detection of unknown signals, (2) soft decision, and (3) adaptive interval output. The first step introduces the threshold () of the minimum signal energy to be detected to guarantee a high detection rate. In the soft decision step, a value () designed to improve the robustness of the system curbs false detection caused by noise interference. In the last step, the coarse synchronization interval radius () is mapped out according to the SNR to reduce resource consumption. The fine synchronization process is based on the coarse synchronization output, and the correlation peak is calculated to complete the synchronization of the signal preambles. The results show that the proposed method achieves a high detection rate of 96% at an extremely low SNR using a low sampling frequency of 10 MHz. Furthermore, the adjustment of allows this method to be applied to ADS-B receivers with different sensitivities. The comprehensive performance of this method to achieve high detection rates and acceptable false alarm rates at extremely low SNRs with limited on-star resources is verified by final simulations to be superior to other methods.