Patent ID: 7684471

Claim:
A combiner circuit for use with a spread-spectrum rake receiver having a plurality of rake receiver fingers providing de-spread symbol data from respective corresponding signal components of a received spread-spectrum multi-path signal, the combiner circuit comprising: a tap-delay line having a sequence of registers cyclically addressed according to a counter index provided by a counter; and a summation circuit, coupled between said plurality of rake receiver fingers and said tap-delay line, having input terminals adapted to receive de-spread symbol data from respective said plurality of rake receiver fingers by way of output terminals of gates controlled in accordance with correlation between said counter index and a respective de-skew index corresponding to each rake receiver finger, each of said gates having a first input terminal to receive said respective de-skew index and a second input terminal coupled to said counter to receive said counter index and one of said output terminals respectively coupled to one of said input terminals of said summation circuit, wherein each of said gates includes a pass gate and a comparator; wherein for each of plural index values of the counter index, the summation circuit is operative to sum data content of a tap-delay line register addressed by said counter with the de-spread symbol data from each rake receiver finger having a matching de-skew index, the summation circuit having an output terminal coupled to said addressed tap-delay line to provide a summation result from said summed data content and said de-spread symbol data to be stored in said addressed tap-delay line register, wherein said summation circuit has another input terminal coupled to said addressed tap-delay line register to receive said data content of said tap-delay line register addressed by said counter.