US 7,010,016 B2 · Method and WCDMA receiver for high-rate and low-rate physical channel reception

Abstract

A spread-spectrum receiver has a high-rate path to receive multi-rate channels and a low-rate path to receive fixed-rate channels. In a wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) embodiment, the high-rate path despreads multi-rate physical channels having a variable spreading factor and the low-rate path despreads physical channels having a fixed spreading factor. The high-rate path may have high-rate rake fingers to despread multipath components of the multi-rate channels. Each multi-rate channel may have a different spreading code allowing for multicode reception. The high-rate path may also include a high-rate rake with finger engines implemented in hardware to multiply symbols with a channel estimation, and a combiner to combine the multipath components. The low-rate path may include low-rate fingers to despread multipath components of the fixed-rate channels and a processor to generate a channel estimation and coherently combine symbols from the low-rate fingers with the channel estimation.

Claims26

Dependent claims

A spread-spectrum receiver comprising:

a high-rate signal-processing path to despread spread-spectrum signals of multi-rate channels with a plurality of despreading factors;
and
a low-rate signal-processing path to despread spread-spectrum signals of fixed-rate channels with a predetermined despreading factor,
wherein the high-rate signal-processing path and the low-rate signal-processing path comprise parallel signal-processing paths to concurrently despread the multi-rate and fixed-rate channels and generate, respectively, first and second data outputs.

1 more element

A wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) receiver to despread multi-rate spread-spectrum physical channels having a variable spreading factor with a plurality of despreading factors and to despread fixed-rate spread-spectrum physical channels having a fixed spreading factor with a predetermined spreading code, the receiver comprising a high-rate signal-processing path to receive the multi-rate channels and a low-rate signal-processing path to receive the fixed-rate channels, wherein the high-rate signal-processing path and the low-rate signal-processing path comprise parallel signal-processing paths configured to concurrently despread the multi-rate and fixed-rate channels respectively and generate first and second data outputs, the high-rate signal-processing path comprises:

a plurality of high-rate rake fingers to despread a multi-path component of each multi-rate channel;
and
a high-rate rake to read symbols from the high-rate rake fingers, to multiply the symbols by a channel estimation, and combine the multi-path components from each rake finger,
and the low-rate signal-processing path comprises:
at least one low-rate finger to despread a multipath component of spread-spectrum signals comprising the fixed-rate channels;
and
a digital signal processor (DSP) to generate a channel estimation and to coherently combine symbols from at least one low-rate finger with the channel estimation.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method and WCDMA receiver for high-rate and low-rate physical channel reception

Life of this patent

Method and WCDMA receiver for high-rate and low-rate physical channel reception

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims26