Performance of the RAKE receiver under imperfect channel estimation in a DS-CDMA system

This paper presents the bit-error rate (BER) performance of the RAKE receiver over a multipath Rayleigh fading channel. The closed-form solution for BER is obtained through analysis of the imperfect channel estimation. We compute the BER as a function of bit energy-to-noise ratio (E/sub b//N/sub 0/), channel and system parameters. This analysis allows predicting the system's performance and helps to optimize the parameter setting for the channel estimation process. Finally, theoretical results are verified by using Monte-Carlo computer simulations.