Programmable digital acquisition and tracking controller

A novel programmable digital acquisition and tracking controller is coupled to the input signal level from the demodulator of a communications receiver and provides programmable signal level threshold detectors and detection intervals adapted to produce an output signal which is indicative of the correlation between the received PN code and the locally generated PN code as compared against a programmable threshold. The programmable detector logic is capable of detecting acquisition correlation and tracking correlation and can optionally inform an external microprocessor of the correlation level so as to implement a wide variety of acquisition, tracking and reacquisition algorithms as well as optional AM demodulation.