Patent ID: 7684529

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving at an 802.11 multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) receiver an interfering signal; collecting interfering signal information that describes the interfering signal and a channel through which the interfering signal propagated, wherein collecting interfering signal information comprises: if the interfering signal is recognized as an 802.11 signal then estimating a channel vector describing the channel through which the interfering signal propagated and estimating a frequency error between a transmitter clock and a receiver clock; and if the interfering signal is not recognized as an 802.11 signal then performing fast Fourier transforms (FFT) on each orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarrier to collect received energy for each OFDM sub-carrier, and estimating a noise covariance matrix for each sub-carrier; receiving a desired signal arriving later than the interfering signal, the desired signal having a higher power than the interfering signal; collecting desired signal information that describes the desired signal and a channel through which the desired signal propagated; and utilizing the interfering and desired signal information to form a spatial equalizer to reject interference due to the interfering signal, wherein utilizing the interfering and desired signal information to form a spatial equalizer comprises if the interfering signal is not recognized as an 802.11 signal then estimating a channel matrix describing a channel between a source of the desired signal and the receiver; and forming the spatial equalizer from the channel matrix describing the channel between the source of the desired signal and the receiver and the noise covariance matrix.