A surface acoustic wave device is used as a unique word detector and coherent demodulator for a digital code differential phase-shift signal. The device improves code word detection by providing a coherent reference with a correlation gain of 10 log M dB. M is the additional number of fingers introduced into the surface acoustic wave device, which determine the phase of the unique word. To achieve this result with higher reliability and higher correlation coefficient, use is made also of a few bits of the clock recovery which precede the unique word in a preamble as used in Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems. The device requires two interdigital output transducers, one (23) of which provides maximum output in response to surface acoustic waves corresponding to a preassigned pattern of the unique word, such as a sequence of all zeros combined with a partial sequence of the clock recovery bits. The outputs of the two interdigital output transducers are maximized at the same instant to detect the auto-correlation peak of the unique word with performance equivalent to coherent demodulation. Also, clock and data are recovered in the second set of interdigital transducers. 
SURFACE ACOUSTIC WAVE UNIQUE WORD DETECTOR AND COHERENT DEMODULATOR