finger - technical definition

In a rake receiver antenna system, an individual receiver that works with other receivers in a coordinated way to gather signal elements much like the tines of a garden rake work together to gather leaves. Each finger gathers a faded, or attenuated, signal element at a separate moment in time.The rake receiver employs spatial diversity and time diversity, combining and correlating the results of all four fingers to optimize the signal, thereby countering the effects of multipath fading and delay spread. Code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems employ rake receivers comprising four fingers to deal with issues of multipath interference (MPI). See also antenna, attenuation, CDMA, delay spread, MPI, multipath fading, spatial diversity, and time diversity.