[Discuss-gnuradio] WCDMA/UMTS receiver implementation

[Miguel Sanz]

Hi,

I am dealing with a UMTS uplink receiver implementation with USRP N210. I have some general questions that I hope that someone can answer:

1) Is it completely necessary to implement a rake receiver? I have been reading quite a lot about it, and it seems extremely complex because it needs channel estimation, and this means to process the received signals in real time (which is not my purpose). Moreover, in the uplink there is no pilot channel like the CPICH in the downlink. The Rake receiver improves the SNR of the signal by combining the multipath effects, but I wonder if the reception of the signal would be too bad if the Rake receiver is not implemented. 

2) My idea is not to use the Rake receiver, because of its complexity. The SDR blocks that I have on mind for the receiver are, in a general sketch::

Root Raised Cosine filter---QPSK DEMODULATOR------   -De-scrambling--------------------------De-spreading( correlating with the output of a OSVF code generator)

                                                       (correlating with the output of a scrambling code generator)

What do you think?any ideas?

Best regards,

Miguel