Patent ID: 7724849

Claim:
A method for providing a noise and interference estimation, the method comprising: identifying within a wireless mobile device one or more unmodulated subcarriers in a received waveform; processing within the wireless mobile device the one or more unmodulated subcarriers to produce a demodulated output; and determining within the wireless mobile device a noise variance σ 2 based on the demodulated output by computing the equation σ 2 = 1 P ⁢ ∑ l = 1 P ⁢ ⁢  Y ⁡ ( k l )  2 , ⁢ where: the k th frequency domain subcarrier Y ⁡ ( k ) = 1 N ⁢ ∑ n = 0 N - 1 ⁢ ⁢ y n ⁢ ⅇ j2 ⁢ ⁢ π ⁢ ⁢ snk N ; y n correspond to time domain samples of a special symbol identified to contain unmodulated carriers; s correspond to the interlace that identifies selected subcarriers in the symbol; N is a number of time domain samples; and P is a number of unmodulated subcarriers.