Patent ID: 8310944

Claim:
An estimator to estimate a signal-to-interference plus noise ratio SINR from the amplitude of known pilot symbols received from a base station within a wireless communication system, said pilot symbols being received during a timeslot according to {circumflex over (θ)} K =(Ŷ K ) 2 /{circumflex over (σ)} K wherein {circumflex over (θ)} K is SINR estimation, and Y K 2 is a mean amplitude estimation of pilot symbols, the estimator comprising a low-pass filter to filter an interference plus noise variance σ K computed from the received pilot symbol amplitudes to obtain an estimated variance {circumflex over (σ)} K with a reduced bias, wherein the low-pass filter has an adjustable coefficient and the estimator comprises an electronic controller able to adjust the value of the adjustable coefficient according to the number N P of received pilot symbols being received during the timeslot wherein the low-pass filter comprises a feedback loop so that the estimated variance {circumflex over (σ)} K for the k th timeslot depends also on an estimated variance {circumflex over (σ)} K−1 of the previous (k−1) th timeslot.