A distributed computing approach in speed enhancement of a rake receiver simulator

Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) system simulators are commonly used as a design and research tool to aid the deployment of 3G as well as forthcoming wireless communication systems. High data rates, reliability, security and Bit Error Rate (BER) performance are key requirements of a 3G system. If realistic simulations are to be performed, these requirements have led to unacceptably long computation times. Inclusion of a rake receiver module, which is mainly employed to address multipath interference, results in further reduction in simulator speed. This paper presents a distributed computing approach using MATLAB to overcome the speed issue of a WCDMA simulator with a rake receiver. We show that the simulation time can be reduced by about 80% by the use of distributed computing combined with code optimizations.