Patent ID: 7088978

Claim:
A method of improving performance in a wireless communication receiver comprising the steps of: receiving a known signal at the receiver that is impaired by signal disturbance that includes non-Gaussian interference; performing channel estimation to obtain a channel estimate based on the known signal and modeling the probabilistic characteristics of the non-Gaussian interference, comprising the steps of: a) modeling the signal disturbance as Gaussian and non-Gaussian disturbance components by generating a disturbance estimate for the signal disturbance as 1) a first, non-Gaussian component, comprising generating one or more parameters to model a non-Gaussian probability distribution function associated with the non-Gaussian interference, wherein the one or more parameters are based on knowledge of a signal type associated with the non-Gaussian interference, and 2) a second. Gaussian component; and, b) performing channel estimation based on the disturbance estimate; and, detecting an unknown signal received at the receiver using the channel estimate.