MLSE receiver for direct-sequence spread-spectrum systems on a multipath fading channel

To accommodate high-speed data transmissions, it may be necessary to substantially reduce the processing gain of a direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) system. As a result, inter-symbol interference effects may become more severe. In this paper, we present a new structure for maximum-likelihood sequence estimation equalization of DSSS signals on a multipath fading channel that performs the function of despreading and equalization simultaneously. Analytical upper bounds are derived for the bit-error probability when random spreading sequences are used, and comparisons to simulation results show that the bounds are quite accurate. The results also show that significant performance improvement over the conventional RAKE receiver is obtained.