Patent ID: 8279743
Filing Date: 2012-10-02
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method of accurately estimating inter-cell interference in a received signal transmitted in a given sector in an OFDM communication system receiver, comprising, when pilot and data subcarriers are subject to the same interference and the propagation channel is approximately constant across subcarriers spanned by a predetermined number of frequency-contiguous pilot signals having pilot patterns that are orthogonal across sectors, such that the cross correlation between two orthogonal pilot patterns over a predetermined sequence is zero: processing the received signal to generate a first set of propagation channel samples that remove the effects of orthogonal pilot patterns; generating a propagation channel estimate from the first set of propagation channel samples; processing the received signal to generate a second set of propagation channel samples that include the effects of orthogonal pilot patterns; and estimating inter-cell interference in the received signal by subtracting the propagation channel estimate from the second propagation channel samples.