Digital adaptive transversal filter for spread spectrum receivers

A digital adaptive transversal filter includes an interface circuit for regulating and digitizing analog input signals, which comprise of multiple spread-spectrum signals, additive thermal noise and additive multiple narrowband interferers, to provide multi-bit digital input signals. A digital finite impulse response filter having a set of variable digital weight coefficients responds to the multi-bit digital input signals to generate digital output signals which contain a reduced amount of narrowband interference. A digital weight generator responds to the digital input and digital output signals for updating the digital weight coefficients, and a reset generator periodically resets the digital weight coefficients to zero initial values. In a preferred embodiment an 8-tap, 8-bit digital adaptive transversal filter operating at 22 MHz was implemented with discrete components and a processing gain of 30 dB was demonstrated.