Patent ID: 7095791

Claim:
In a receiver of a digital communication system, a method for receiving an OFDM signal via a channel in the presence of noise and/or interference, the receiver including a plurality of antennas, the method comprising: (a) receiving via the plurality of antennas a time domain OFDM burst that includes training symbols of known transmitted values in at least some of frequency subchannels of the channel; (b) converting the time-domain OFDM burst received at each antenna to form sets of frequency domain subchannel values, each set corresponding to one of the antennas; (c) separating training symbols of said received OFDM burst and determining estimates of the channel response of the at least some of the frequency subchannels using the known transmitted values of the training symbols; (d) forming a first statistical characterization of noise and/or interference of the at least some of the frequency subchannels using the determined estimates; (e) combining the sets of frequency domain subchannel values corresponding to the antennas, including the data symbols of the received OFDM burst based on said first statistical characterization to form combined data symbol estimates; (f) forming from the combined data symbol estimates hard decision estimates of the received symbols in each frequency subchannel; (g) forming a second characterization of noise and/or interference based on the hard decision estimates; and (h) forming estimates of the transmitted data symbols in the subchannels taking into account the formed second statistical characterization.