Impact of spreading bandwidth and diversity order on the error probability performance of RAKE reception in dense multipath channels

We develop an analytical framework to quantify the effects of the spreading bandwidth on spread spectrum systems operating in dense multipath environments. The focus of the paper is to characterize the symbol error probability (SEP) performance of a RAKE receiver tracking the L strongest multipath components in frequency-selective fading. By transforming the physical RAKE receiver with correlated ordered paths into the domain of a "virtual RAKE" receiver with independent virtual paths, analytical expressions for the SEP are derived in terms of the spreading bandwidth, multipath spread of the channel and the number of combined paths