Patent ID: 8116355

Claim:
A method of processing a signal emanating from a multipath transmission medium, said method comprising the steps of: detecting a number L of echoes of the signal that is received, with L being greater than a number N of fingers of a “Rake” receiver; and selecting N echoes from among the L echoes that are detected, wherein at least some of the L echoes that are detected are echoes temporally correlated according to a determined correlation criterion, the selecting step comprises the sub-steps of: determining, as a function of the initial complex amplitudes associated with at least the temporally correlated echoes, weighted individual energies corresponding to temporally decorrelated virtual echoes; and selecting, from among the L echoes that are detected, N echoes as a function of a determined power criterion using at least the weighted individual energies, and the determining sub-step comprises calculating a set of N weighted individual energies for at least one possible combination of N echoes from among the L echoes, the calculation of the set of N weighted individual energies comprising determining the covariance matrix of the initial complex amplitudes of the N echoes, and the N eigenvalues of the covariance matrix.