Patent ID: 7167508

Claim:
An apparatus for estimating an angle-of-arrival, the angle-of-arrival being an incident angle of a radio signal from a mobile station with respect to a base station in a spread spectrum communication system, the base station including a first antenna and a second antenna, the first antenna and the second antenna outputting a first spread signal and a second spread signal, respectively, according to the radio signal, the apparatus comprising: a multiplexer coupled to the first and the second antennas for receiving the first spread signal and the second spread signal and outputting a multiplexed signal; a de-spreading unit coupled to the multiplexer for receiving and de-spreading the multiplexed signal and outputting a despread signal; a multipath suppressor comprising: a pilot bits extractor coupled to the de-spreading unit for receiving the despread signal and outputting a set of transmitted pilot bits; and a multiplicator coupled to the pilot bits extractor for receiving the set of transmitted pilot bits, multiplying the set of transmitted pilot bit by a set of predetermined pilot bits, and accordingly outputting a serial signal; a serial/parallel converter coupled to the multipath suppressor for receiving the serial signal and outputting a first parallel signal of the first spread signal and a second parallel signal of the second spread signal accordingly; and an AOA estimator for cross-correlating the first and the second parallel signals and outputting the angle-of-arrival accordingly.