A Direct Construction of Prime-Power-Length Zero-Correlation Zone Sequences for QS-CDMA System

In recent years, zero-correlation zone (ZCZ) sequences are being studied due to their significant applications in quasi-synchronous code division multiple access (QS-CDMA) systems and other wireless communication domains. However, the lengths of most existing ZCZ sequences are limited, and their parameters are not flexible, which are leading to practical limitations in their use in QS-CDMA and other communication systems. The current study proposes a direct construction of ZCZ sequences of prime-power length with flexible parameters by using multivariable functions. In the proposed construction, we first present a multivariable function to generate a vector with specific properties; this is further used to generate another class of multivariable functions to generate the desired $(p^t,(p-1)p^n,p^{n+t+1})$-ZCZ sequence set, where $p$ is a prime number, $t,n$ are positive integers, and $t\leq n$. The constructed ZCZ sequence set is optimal for the binary case and asymptotically optimal for the non-binary case by the \emph{Tang-Fan-Matsufuji} bound. Moreover, a relation between the second-order cosets of first-order generalized Reed-Muller code and the proposed ZCZ sequences is also established. The proposed construction of ZCZ sequences is compared with existing constructions, and it is observed that the parameters of this ZCZ sequence set are a generalization of that of in some existing works. Finally, the performance of the proposed ZCZ-based QS-CDMA system is compared with the Walsh-Hadamard and Gold code-based QS-CDMA system.