Patent ID: 7983363

Claim:
A method for decoding a communication signal in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: (a) using an antenna for receiving a pilot signal; (b) establishing an initial channel estimate based on the pilot signal; (c) initializing channel estimates associated with each state of a trellis to the initial channel estimate; (d) computing branch metrics between each pair of present states and next states in a stage of the trellis based on a channel estimate associated with each present state of the trellis and data signals associated with the stage of the trellis; (e) selecting a winning state transition to each next state based on the branch metrics and accumulated branch metrics for the present states; and (f) updating the channel estimates associated with each next state based on data symbols associated with the winning transition to each next state; and (g) repeating steps (d), (e) and (f) for each stage of the trellis; and wherein updating the channel estimates comprises multiplying by an energy ratio of a traffic signal energy to a pilot signal energy.