Patent ID: 7577184

Claim:
A spread spectrum digital communication receiver, the receiver comprising: an input memory buffer for storing samples of an input signal; a code generator circuit for generating a regenerated user code; a device for the estimation of a channel delay profile energy, for computing the time delays and amplitudes of each received multi-path component of said input signal; a plurality of fingers; and a finger allocation unit for processing said channel delay profile energy in order to select the strongest multi-path components of said input signal and allocate them to said fingers; wherein the device for the estimation of a channel delay profile energy comprises: a basic correlator having a first input for sequentially reading from a memory location of said input memory buffer a plurality of samples of said input signal, a second input for receiving from said code generator circuit a regenerated user code, and an output terminal for generating, by means of a correlation operation between said plurality of samples of said input signal and said regenerated user code, a value of said channel delay profile energy; and a memory controller circuit for addressing said input memory buffer so that said first input of said basic correlator is successively fed with the content of the memory locations of said memory buffer, each addressing operation corresponding to a new correlation operation of said basic correlator for the computation of a new value of said channel delay profile energy.