Patent ID: 8503577
Filing Date: 2013-08-06
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A circuit for estimating a signal quality of a signal received from a wireless communication channel, the received signal comprising at least one field that is modulated and encoded, the circuit comprising: a processor configured to generate at least one reference field based, at least in part, on the at least one field in the received signal and on a channel estimation signal, the channel estimation signal being representative of at least one characteristic of the wireless communication channel; and a comparator coupled to the processor, the comparator being configured to generate a signal quality estimate as a function of a difference between the at least one reference field and the at least one field in the received signal; wherein the processor comprises: a slicer configured to receive the at least one field in the received signal and to recover therefrom a plurality of received symbol bits associated with the at least one field; a decoder configured to correct one or more errors potentially present in the received symbol bits, the corrected received symbol bits corresponding to originally transmitted symbol bits in the at least one field; an encoder configured to encode the corrected received symbol bits; a modulator configured to convert the encoded corrected received symbol bits to a baseband signal; and a multiplier configured to combine the baseband signal and the channel estimation signal and to generate the at least one reference field based at least in part on the baseband signal and on the channel estimation signal.