Unimodular Perfect and Nearly Perfect Sequences: a Variation of Björck’s Scheme

Constant Amplitude (CA), Zero Auto Correlation (ZAC) sequences (or CAZAC sequences, aka perfect sequences) have numerous applications. We generalize the CAZAC notion to what we term as CASAC by permitting small autocorrelations (SAC). We extend Björck’s classification result of two-valued CAZAC sequences by providing a complete classification of all almost 2-valued (i.e., two-valued except for the first position which uses a third value) CASAC sequences. While Björck’s original work dealt only with primes p, we extend his ideas to any abelian group of order
$v\equiv 1\pmod {4}$
, as opposed to restricting just to the prime fields GF(p). Björck sequences have better ambiguity function than Zadoff-Chu sequences, making them suitable for radar and communications applications in the presence of high Doppler shifts. In fact, the discrete narrow band ambiguity function has an optimal bound in case of Björck sequences (as opposed to Gauss sequences). A one-parameter infinite family of CASAC we construct would have applications in Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) areas. Toward MIMO applications, we introduce a performance measure we term as cross merit factor to study cross correlation behavior, generalizing the well-known notion of Golay Merit Factor (GMF).