Rake combiner apparatus using charge transfer element

Abstract

A RAKE combiner apparatus uses a charge transfer element, which can permit a high-precision RAKE receiver to be constructed by a simple circuit structure, has lower consumption power, can allow the finger number to be arbitrarily set within a range of up to the number of taps of the matched filter and can implement a highly efficient RAKE process. This RAKE combiner apparatus has at least one charge routing mechanism for receiving a group of charge signals in at least one time sequence, and transferring each of the input charge signals to at least two different kinds of routes in accordance with a separately supplied digital signal; at least one signal accumulation mechanism for executing signal accumulation by integrating the routed charge signals directly as charges or after subjecting the routed charge signals to predetermined signal conversion; and a RAKE controller for predicting a multi-path environment of communication paths associated with reception of the input charge signals, and supplying a digital signal for determining a transfer route of each of the input charge signals to the charge routing mechanism.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.