Method for path searching and verification

A method for selecting one or more finger delays for a RAKE receiver comprising:

• receiving a signal having one or more signal images, each signal image having a corresponding signal delay;
• generating a hierarchical delay tree comprising a plurality of delay nodes in a lowermost level of the delay tree linked by branches and one or more linking nodes to a root node at the highest level of the delay tree, wherein each delay node is associated with a signal delay;
• searching through the delay tree to identify one or more surviving delay nodes, wherein searching comprises traversing downward through the delay tree and identifying one or more surviving nodes at each level during said downward traversal by comparing a value associated with each node traversed with a predetermined threshold;
• adding candidate delays corresponding to the surviving delay nodes to a candidate pool;
• and
• selecting one or more finger delays for the RAKE receiver from the candidate pool.

A delay searcher for a receiver to search a received signal having a plurality of signal images corresponding to a plurality of signal delays for one or more candidate delays, the delay searcher comprising:

• a tree generator to generate a hierarchical delay tree comprising:
• a plurality of delay nodes in a lowermost level of the delay tree, wherein each delay node is associated with a signal delay;
• a root node at the highest level of the delay tree;
• one or more linking nodes disposed between the root node and the plurality of delay nodes;
• and
• branches that link the plurality of delay nodes to the root node via the linking nodes;
• and
• a tree searcher to search through the delay tree to identify one or more surviving delay nodes, wherein the one or more surviving delay nodes correspond to the one or more candidate delays, and wherein the tree searcher traverses downward through the delay tree to identify one or more surviving nodes at each level during said downward traversal by comparing a value associated with each node traversed with a predetermined threshold.

A RAKE receiver in a wireless network comprising:

• a front end receiver for receiving a signal having one or more signal images, each signal image having a corresponding signal delay;
• a delay searcher to generate and search through a hierarchical delay tree based on delay nodes associated with the signal delays to identify one or more surviving delay nodes, wherein each surviving delay node corresponds to a candidate delay, and wherein the tree searcher traverses downward through the delay tree to identify the one or more surviving nodes at each level during said downward traversal by comparing a value associated with each node traversed with a predetermined threshold;
• and
• wherein the RAKE receiver selects one or more RAKE finger delays from the candidate delays.