A reduced-complexity RAKE receiver structure for high-speed indoor wireless communications

A general expression is derived to quantify the average bit error rate performance of a maximum amplitude selection diversity (MA/SD) RAKE receiver over Nakagami multipath fading channels. This includes all possible conditions of signal strengths and arbitrary fading parameters. This low-complexity receiver architecture is practically appealing because of its simplicity as well as its ability to operate effectively even at high signalling rates. While the maximal-ratio diversity (MRC) combiner with perfect channel fading estimation outperforms the proposed MA/SD scheme, the latter yields superior performance when inaccurate channel estimation is considered (i.e., with Gaussian error in the combiner weighting factors). An alternative simple expression for rapid evaluation of MRC diversity performance in a Nakagami fading channel with arbitrary parameters is also presented