Patent ID: 7532664

Claim:
A method, comprising: applying signals received from at least first and second antennas to L finger pairs, where L is ≧1, in accordance with resolvable signal paths, each finger pair comprising a first finger member and a second finger member, wherein the at least first antenna provides a signal to the first finger member of each of 1 through L finger pairs and the at least second antenna provides a signal to the second finger member of each of 1 through L finger pairs; outputting traffic symbols directed to weighting and pilot symbols directed to weighting from each finger member; weighting each of the traffic symbols and the pilot symbols output by a corresponding finger member by a weighting factor unique to the corresponding finger member; space combining weighted pilot symbols output from the finger members of each pair to produce a noise plus interference estimation for a specific finger pair under consideration; combining the noise plus interference estimations of output of each finger pair to generate a cumulative noise plus interference estimate, as seen at a channel decoder input; subtracting the cumulative noise plus interference estimate from an estimate of the total signal energy input at the channel decoder input to generate an unbiased total signal estimate; and dividing the unbiased total signal estimate by the cumulative noise plus interference estimate to obtain an unbiased signal to interference plus noise ratio estimate that accounts for space correlated and uncorrelated interference contributions.