The goal of this paper is to investigate the performance of MIMO-WCDMA networks, where Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is employed at the reception. Multipath propagation is exploited, as the individual received signals can be seen as different instances of the same physical phenomenon (i.e. transmission and reception of WCDMA sequences). In this context, the received data are first transformed using an orthogonal representation. Afterwards, the constructed covariance matrix is used in order to reduce the overall complexity of a proposed transmission strategy for signal transmission in MIMO-WCDMA networks in diversity combining transmission mode. As results indicate, for a 2×2 MIMO orientation (i.e. two transmit and receive antennas) and six multipath components, the complexity of the proposed algorithm can be reduced up to 15%/60% for SNR equal to 0/5 dB, respectively.
