Summary: This paper describes a sounding-based multi-path search architecture for a WCDMA system. The proposed multi-path search architecture contains a fast searcher, a sounding subsystem and a path arbitrator. The fast searcher quickly estimates the coarse multi-path delays. The path arbitrator determines the candidate paths according to both the coarsely estimated multi-path delays and the measurement results of the sounding subsystem. The sounding subsystem is to average the candidate paths and obtain the reliable output paths. In addition, we utilize a reliability measurement unit within the sounding subsystem to measure the reliability of each candidate path and feed back the results to the path arbitrator for path selection. The proposed multi-path searcher is evaluated by computer simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed multi-path search architecture takes only 2 ms to detect most of the signal power even if the multi-path delay profile is abruptly changed. The architecture of the sounding-based multi-path searcher has also low-complexity for hardware design.