RAKE RECEIVER COMBINING ALL THE USEFUL MULTIPATH COMPONENTS OF A SPREAD SPECTRUM SIGNAL

摘要

Conventional Rake receivers for spread spectrum signals are typically restricted in the number of multipath components they can usefully combine. The present invention provides apparatus for combining all the useful multipath components in a received signal with modest complexity. Digital correlators are provided over the multipath delay spread of the signal at predetermined intervals and their outputs are maximal ratio combined. With close to rectangular transmission received filters, almost all the entire signal energy can be recovered at the output of the combiner even though no attempt is made to accurately align any of the correlators onto a specific multipath component.