Patent ID: 7239677

Claim:
A method of scaling path delay values in a communication system in which estimates of received symbols corresponding to the path delays are combined, comprising the steps of: getting a plurality of path delay values, including getting a set of temporal statistics of the path delay values, the set of temporal statistics including a correlation matrix, a normalized correlation matrix, and a mean energy vector; identifying the path delay values as either peak values or neighbor values; organizing the peak values and neighbor values into groups, wherein each group comprises at least one peak value; and for each group, determining a set of weight values w 1 wherein the weight values in a set correspond to respective path delays and are based on at least the set of weight values w determined for the respective group and the set of temporal statistics; and determining the set of weight values w based on w =( R+βI ) −1 (|Ω| M *+β1). in which R is the correlation matrix, M is the mean energy vector, β is a selectable parameter, and Ω depends on the normalized correlation matrix and on the mean energy vector and is related to uncorrelated energy or signal-to-interference ratio of a group.