Patent ID: 8731094

Claim:
A method for decoding precoded signals in a wireless communication system comprising a sender and a receiver, said sender and said receiver sharing a codebook containing a plurality of precoding matrices, said sender precoding at least a data signal to be transmitted with one of the plurality of precoding matrices, said method comprising: receiving signals from the sender; estimating a composite channel between the sender and the receiver based on a part of the received signals that is known a priori; evaluating relevancies of precoding matrices in said codebook to a precoded signal in the received signals based on at least the estimated composite channel and the codebook according to a predetermined criterion, wherein the evaluating comprises: estimating the precoding matrix applied by the sender based on the estimated composite channel and a previously estimated raw channel; and determining similarities between the estimated precoding matrix and individual precoding matrices in said codebook according to a matrix similarity criterion to evaluate said relevancies; selecting a precoding matrix based on a comparison of the evaluated relevancies, wherein the selecting comprises selecting a precoding matrix with the maximum similarity as the precoding matrix with the maximum relevancy; and applying the selected precoding matrix for decoding the received precoded signal; wherein the part of the received signals that is known a priori is precoded with the same precoding matrix as the data signal.