Performance comparison between pilot symbol assisted and blind beamformer-RAKE receivers at the reverse link of third generation CDMA system

A beamformer-RAKE receiver allows processing of the signal in both the spatial and temporal domain by combining an adaptive antenna array with a RAKE. This can significantly improve the system performance along the reverse link of a wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) system by providing multiple access interference (MAI) suppression and multipath diversity. We compare the performance of two different beamformer-RAKE receivers that employ the minimum mean square error (MUSE) and the maximum signal to interference and noise ratio (MSINR) criteria to form the beams in the spatial domain. The pilot symbol assisted (PSA) technique and the blind code gated algorithm (CGA) were selected to exploit the aforementioned criteria.