On the Acquisition Time for an Apollo Ranging Code

An Apollo ranging system is considered whose phase reference is obtained by a phase-locked loop for bit synchronization. The bit phase reference is noisy, and the error probability for the ranging code is shown to depend on the input signal energy per bit to noise density ratio. The procedure of computing the acquisition time for the ranging code is then presented and the acquisition time for a lunar ranging code is plotted versus the input signal-to-noise density ratio.