Patent ID: 8391390

Claim:
A method of processing a signal received from a multiple element antenna, to estimate a MIMO communications channel comprising: performing a decomposition of an initial channel estimate associated with a first subcarrier of a plurality of subcarriers defined in the channel to estimate eigenvectors associated with that first subcarrier of the received signal, wherein performing the decomposition comprises carrying out an iterative procedure used to converge on an estimate for the eigenvectors; defining a first beamforming transformation to be applied to a future transmitted signal on the basis of the estimated eigenvectors; for each of the other subcarriers, performing an additional decomposition comprising an iterative procedure in order to determine a further beamforming transformation for each of said one or more other subcarriers, wherein said additional decompositions are carried out incrementally, and for each subcarrier the final estimate obtained from the iterative procedure is used as an initial guess in the iterative procedure for the next subcarrier, such that information determined in one of said decompositions contributes to a later executed decomposition.