A receiver comprising: a plurality of receive antennas configured to receive, on plural subcarriers transmitted over a radio interface, a frequency domain signal that comprises contribution from a block of time domain symbols; characterized by: processing means for performing symbol detection of the time domain symbols using a multi-stage joint detection procedure in which the processing means is configured: for a first stage, to divide the block into a first number of sub-blocks each having a first sub-block size; for a second stage, to divide the block into a second number of sub-blocks each having a second sub-block size, the second sub-block size being greater than the first sub-block size; for the second stage, to use the candidate symbol combination values of the first stage to formulate joint hypotheses to serve as candidates for the joint detection operation of the second stage; characterized in that: for each stage, to formulate frequency domain combining weights and uses the frequency domain combining weights for combining multiple received versions of each subcarrier to provide candidate symbol combination values for symbols in each sub-block of the respective stage, the frequency domain combining weights of each stage being dependent on the sub-block size of the respective stage and thus differing from stage to stage, the multiple receive versions of each subcarrier being received over a different receive antenna. a plurality of receive antennas configured to receive, on plural subcarriers transmitted over a radio interface, a frequency domain signal that comprises contribution from a block of time domain symbols; characterized by: processing means for performing symbol detection of the time domain symbols using a multi-stage joint detection procedure in which the processing means is configured: for a first stage, to divide the block into a first number of sub-blocks each having a first sub-block size; for a second stage, to divide the block into a second number of sub-blocks each having a second sub-block size, the second sub-block size being greater than the first sub-block size; for the second stage, to use the candidate symbol combination values of the first stage to formulate joint hypotheses to serve as candidates for the joint detection operation of the second stage; characterized in that: for each stage, to formulate frequency domain combining weights and uses the frequency domain combining weights for combining multiple received versions of each subcarrier to provide candidate symbol combination values for symbols in each sub-block of the respective stage, the frequency domain combining weights of each stage being dependent on the sub-block size of the respective stage and thus differing from stage to stage, the multiple receive versions of each subcarrier being received over a different receive antenna. processing means for performing symbol detection of the time domain symbols using a multi-stage joint detection procedure in which the processing means is configured: for a first stage, to divide the block into a first number of sub-blocks each having a first sub-block size; for a second stage, to divide the block into a second number of sub-blocks each having a second sub-block size, the second sub-block size being greater than the first sub-block size; for the second stage, to use the candidate symbol combination values of the first stage to formulate joint hypotheses to serve as candidates for the joint detection operation of the second stage; characterized in that: for each stage, to formulate frequency domain combining weights and uses the frequency domain combining weights for combining multiple received versions of each subcarrier to provide candidate symbol combination values for symbols in each sub-block of the respective stage, the frequency domain combining weights of each stage being dependent on the sub-block size of the respective stage and thus differing from stage to stage, the multiple receive versions of each subcarrier being received over a different receive antenna. for a first stage, to divide the block into a first number of sub-blocks each having a first sub-block size; for a second stage, to divide the block into a second number of sub-blocks each having a second sub-block size, the second sub-block size being greater than the first sub-block size; for the second stage, to use the candidate symbol combination values of the first stage to formulate joint hypotheses to serve as candidates for the joint detection operation of the second stage; characterized in that: for each stage, to formulate frequency domain combining weights and uses the frequency domain combining weights for combining multiple received versions of each subcarrier to provide candidate symbol combination values for symbols in each sub-block of the respective stage, the frequency domain combining weights of each stage being dependent on the sub-block size of the respective stage and thus differing from stage to stage, the multiple receive versions of each subcarrier being received over a different receive antenna. for each stage, to formulate frequency domain combining weights and uses the frequency domain combining weights for combining multiple received versions of each subcarrier to provide candidate symbol combination values for symbols in each sub-block of the respective stage, the frequency domain combining weights of each stage being dependent on the sub-block size of the respective stage and thus differing from stage to stage, the multiple receive versions of each subcarrier being received over a different receive antenna.