Multipath fading effects on wide-band DS/CDMA signals: analysis, simulation, and measurements

Transmitting signals over multipath fading channels causes distortions and variations at the receiver. For narrow-band signals, the envelope of the received signal is well characterized by a Rayleigh random process. Rayleigh fading causes large variations in the signal envelope. For wide-band signals, the effect of Rayleigh fading is mitigated. The paper considers the effect of receiver processing on the mitigation effect for wide-band DS/CDMA signals. The mitigation effect is shown by a reduction of the coefficient of variation of the received power as a function of bandwidth spreading. The parameters chip rate, processing gain, and the number of multipath components tracked are investigated for their effect upon the mitigation-the mitigation effect is sensitive to combinations of these parameters