Abstract: Techniques to prevent fingers from merging. For each update command to adjust the timing of a particular “target” finger, a list of “candidate” fingers for which merging is to be prevented is determined. Detection for merging is then performed for each candidate finger, e.g., one at a time. For each candidate finger, a comparison is performed using the position of the target finger, the position of the candidate finger, and a merge threshold. A determination is then made whether merging is detected for the candidate finger based on the comparison result. The update command may be disallowed for the target finger if merging is detected for any candidate finger, and may be allowed if merging is not detected for all candidate fingers. A “preferred” target finger may be allowed to be adjusted even if merging is detected for a non-preferred candidate finger, which may be moved instead.

Abstract: A pilot signal processor is used to handle the Pilot Channel related processing. This is accomplished using dedicated hardware processing instead of with firmware in a DSP processor at the demodulation front end. Typically the DSP processor is much less power efficient than dedicated hardware, so by moving some tasks out of the firmware into dedicated hardware engine, the MIP requirement of the DSP processor and the overall power consumption will reduce. Further, moving these functions to a hardware processor results in improved system performance due to the reduced processing latency (hardware-hardware-hardware vs. hardware-firmware-hardware). The functions of the pilot signal processor include a pilot filter, odd pilot processing, RSSI lock detection, Nt_Io estimation, frequency tracking loop, and time tracking loop.

Abstract: Techniques to prevent fingers from merging. For each update command to adjust the timing of a particular “target” finger, a list of “candidate” fingers for which merging is to be prevented is determined. Detection for merging is then performed for each candidate finger, e.g., one at a time. For each candidate finger, a comparison is performed using the position of the target finger, the position of the candidate finger, and a merge threshold. A determination is then made whether merging is detected for the candidate finger based on the comparison result. The update command may be disallowed for the target finger if merging is detected for any candidate finger, and may be allowed if merging is not detected for all candidate fingers. A “preferred” target finger may be allowed to be adjusted even if merging is detected for a non-preferred candidate finger, which may be moved instead.