A rake receiver is a radio receiver designed to counter the effects of multipath fading. It does this by using several "sub-receivers" each delayed slightly in order to tune in to the individual multipath components. Each component is decoded independently, but at a later stage combined in order to make the most use of the different transmission characteristics of each transmission path. This could very well result in higher SNR (or EbNo) in a multipath environment than in a "clean" environment. The word receiver has a number of different meanings: In communications and information processing, a receiver is the recipient (observer) of a message (information), which is sent from a source (object). ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... In telecommunication, multipath is the propagation phenomenon that results in radio signals reaching the receiving antenna by two or more paths. ... Transmission is the following: Generally, transmission is the act of passing something on. ... The phrase signal-to-noise ratio, often abbreviated SNR or S/N, is an engineering term for the ratio between the magnitude of a signal (meaningful information) and the magnitude of background noise. ... Eb/No (the Energy per bit per noise power spectral density) is a parameter used in signal processing and telecommunications similar to Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). ...

The Rake reciever is so named because of it's analogous function to a garden rake, each branch collecting bit or symbol energy similarly to how tines on a rake collect leaves. Rake receivers are common in a wide variety of radio devices, including mobile phones and wireless LAN equipment. The notebook is connected to the wireless access point using a PCMCIA wireless card. ...