Abstract
We propose and analyze in this letter new finger management techniques which are applicable for RAKE receivers operating in the soft handover region. These schemes employ "distributed" types of generalized selection combining (GSC) and minimum selection GSC schemes in order to minimize the impact of sudden connection loss of one of the active base stations. By accurately quantifying the average error rate, we show through numerical examples that our newly proposed distributed schemes offer a clear advantage in comparison with their conventional counterparts.