Impact of Finger Placement on the Correlation Properties of Rake Combined Signals

3G mobile devices and base stations employ rake receivers. An important issue in the design of such receivers is finger allocation. This paper explores the relationship between finger placement and the correlation properties of rake combined signals. The dependence of correlation coefficients on system parameters such as the multipath characteristics of the propagation channel, the number of users, the processing gain and the thermal noise power is also discussed. Several conclusions useful in the analysis and design of rake receivers are drawn. A low complexity finger placement algorithm is finally suggested. In the proposed receiver, finger allocation is based on the correlation properties of the desired signal component only. The receiver performs close to complex structures in the literature.