Impact of spreading bandwidth on Rake reception in dense multipath channels

Spread spectrum (SS) multiple access techniques have been proposed for thir d generation broadband wireless access. We develop an analytical framework to quantify the effects of spreading bandwidth on SS systems operating in d ense multipath environments in terms of the receiver performance, receiver complexity, and multipath channel parameters. In particular, we consider wi de-sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS) Gaussian channels with frequency-selective fading. The focus of the paper is to characterize the c ombined signal of Rake receiver fingers tracking the strongest multipath co mponents. Closed form expressions for the mean and the variance of the tota l Rake receiver output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are derived in terms of the number of Rake fingers, spreading bandwidth, and multipath spread of th e channel,The proposed problem is made analytically tractable by transformi ng the physical Rake paths into the virtual path domain. A representative r esult indicates that for SS systems with 5 MHz signal bandwidth operating i n a channel with constant power delay profile having 5 mu s spread, the ave rage SNR gain from increasing the number of Rake fingers from one to three is 3.8 dB and from three to five is 1.5 dB. Furthermore, the reduction in t he variation of SNR is 1.1 dB and 0.4 dB for the same increments in the num ber of fingers.