Average channel capacity for RAKE receivers

The average channel capacity (in the Shannon sense) assigned to each user of a spread spectrum system operating in Rayleigh fading is estimated when optimum operation of a maximal ratio combining RAKE receiver is assumed. As is shown, the derived expression fully conforms to the upper bound for the capacity of an ideal non-fading additive white Gaussian noise channel when the transmitted signal bandwidth tends to infinity, i.e. the Shannon limit, proving the validity of the presented analysis