Rake Receiver

In a mobile radio channel reflected waves arrive with small relative time delays, self interference occurs. Direct Sequence (DS) Spread Spectrum is often claimed to have particular properties that makes it less vulnerable to multi-path reception. In particular, the rake receiver architecture allows an optimal combining of energy received over paths with different. It avoids wave cancellation (fades) if delayed paths arrive with phase differences and appropriately weighs signals coming in with different signal-to-noise ratios.

The rake receiver consists of multiple correlators, in which the receive signal is multiplied by time-shifted versions of a locally generated code sequence. The intention is to separate signals such that each finger only sees signals coming in over a single (resolvable) path. The spreading code is chosen to have a very small autocorrelation value for any nonzero time offset. This avoids crosstalk between fingers.In practice, the situation is less ideal. It is not the full periodic autocorrelation that determines the crosstalk between signals in different fingers, but rather two partial correlations, with contributions from two consecutive bits or symbols. It has been attempted to find sequences that have satisfactory partial correlation values, but the crosstalk due to partial (non-periodic) correlations remains substantially more difficult to reduce than the effects of periodic correlations.

The rake receiver is designed to optimally detected a DS-CDMA signal transmitted over a dispersive multi-path channel. It is an extension of the concept of the matched filter.

In the matched filter receiver, the signal is correlated with a locally generated copy of the signal waveform. If, however, the signal is distorted by the channel, the receiver should correlate the incoming signal by a copy of the expected received signal, rather than by a copy of transmitted waveform. Thus the receiver should estimate the delay profile of channel, and adapt its locally generated copy according to this estimate.

In a multipath channel, delayed reflections interfere with the direct signal. However, a DS-CDMA signal suffering from multipath dispersion can be detected by a rake receiver. This receiver optimally combines signals received over multiple paths.

A rake receiver with 5 fingers:

The rake receiver gathers the energy received over the various delayed propagation paths. According to the maximum ratio combining principle, the SNR at the output is the sum of the SNRs in the individual branches, provided that:

1. we assume that only AWGN is present (no interference)

2. codes with a time offset are truly orthogonal