Patent ID: 8416891
Filing Date: 2013-04-09
Classification: H04B

Abstract:
1. A method of operating a radio receiver to receive information from a signal transmitted on a physical broadcast channel, wherein the radio receiver includes a blind processing and decoding unit that operates in accordance with a blind decoder algorithm that requires that a hypothesis be made about how many transmit antennas were used to transmit the signal, the method comprising: receiving a signal; detecting one or more characteristics of the received signal that are indicative of how many transmit antennas were used to transmit the signal; accessing a stored list of transmit antenna hypotheses, wherein each of the transmit antenna hypotheses represents how many transmit antennas were used to transmit the signal; for each of the transmit antenna hypotheses stored in the list, determining a probability value based, at least in part, on the detected one or more characteristics of the received signal; modifying the stored list of transmit antenna hypotheses to associate the probability values with respective ones of the transmit antenna hypotheses; and using the modified stored list of transmit antenna hypotheses to provide antenna hypothesis probabilities, and operating the blind processing and decoding unit such that the blind processing and decoding unit begins with a most probable antenna hypothesis and continues with increasingly less probable antenna hypotheses until either a successful decoding of the signal has occurred or all antenna hypotheses have been made.