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A rake receiver is a radio receiver designed to counter the effects of multipath

fading. It does this by using several "sub-receivers" called fingers, that is,
several correlators each assigned to a different multipath component. Each finge
r independently decodes a single multipath component; at a later stage the contr
ibution of all fingers are combined in order to make the most use of the differe
nt transmission characteristics of each transmission path. This could very well
result in higher signal-to-noise ratio (or Eb/N0) in a multipath environment tha
n in a "clean" environment.
The multipath channel through which a radio wave transmits can be viewed as tran
smitting the original (line of sight) wave pulse through a number of multipath c
omponents. Multipath components are delayed copies of the original transmitted w
ave traveling through a different echo path, each with a different magnitude and
time-of-arrival at the receiver. Since each component contains the original inf
ormation, if the magnitude and time-of-arrival (phase) of each component is comp
uted at the receiver (through a process called channel estimation), then all the
components can be added coherently to improve the information reliability.
The rake receiver is so named because it reminds the function of a garden rake,
each finger collecting symbol energy similarly to how tines on a rake collect le
aves.
Contents [hide]
1 Mathematical definition
2 History
3 Use
4 References
Mathematical definition[edit]
A Rake receiver utilizes multiple correlators to separately detect M strongest m
ultipath components. Each correlator may be quantized using 1, 2, 3 or 4 bits.
The outputs of each correlator are weighted to provide better estimate of the tr
ansmitted signal than is provided by a single component. Demodulation and bit de
cisions are then based on the weighted outputs of the M correlators.
History[edit]
Rake receivers must have either a general-purpose CPU or some other form of digi
tal signal processing hardware in them to process and correlate the intended sig
nal. Rake receivers only became common after 16-bit CPUs capable of signal proce
ssing became widely available. The rake receiver was patented in the US in 1956,
[1] but it took until the 1970s to design practical implementations of the recei
ver.
Radio astronomers were the first substantial users of rake receivers in the late
1960s to mid-1980s as this kind of receiver could scan large sky regions yet no
t create large volumes of data beyond what most data recorders could handle at t
he time. Astropulse that is part of SETI@Home project uses a variant of a rake r
eceiver as part of its sky searchesso this kind of receiver is still current for
the needs of radio astronomy.
Use[edit]

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