Patent ID: 8891698

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: processing means for processing a received multipath signal having a plurality of signal paths to determine the earliest significant signal path, the processing means including: data input means for providing, for each of a series of time periods, data representative of the energy and relative delay of the signal paths; data filtering means, coupled to the data input means, for filtering the data for each time period to spread the data of each signal path; signal path identification means, coupled to the data filtering means, for identifying from the filtered data a signal path which, after the spreading, is present at the same delay in a plurality of the time periods, and to identify any further such signal paths; energy determination means, coupled to the signal path identification means, for determining an indication of combined energy of the filtered data of the identified signal paths within a time period; energy assessment means, coupled to the energy determination means, for determining a time at which the indication satisfies a selected criterion; and path selection means, coupled to the energy assessment means, for selecting the earliest significant signal path dependent on the determined time.