Patent ID: 8116710

Claim:
A method implemented by a wireless receiver of tracking scatterer parameters used to determine channel estimates for a wireless channel, the method comprising: determining a first set of scatterer parameters based on one or more sets of signal samples received during one or more previous time intervals, wherein the first set of scatterer parameters comprises; a set of unequally-spaced path delays; a corresponding set of unequally-spaced rates of change wherein the rate of change comprises a Doppler frequency; and a corresponding set of complex scattering coefficients wherein each scattering coefficient corresponds to a scattering object; wherein determining the first set of scatterer parameters further comprises: determining a first set of noise whitened channel frequency responses based on the one or more sets of signal samples received during a first evaluation period comprising one or more previous time intervals; and determining the first set of scatterer parameters for the first evaluation period based on the first set of noise whitened channel frequency responses, wherein elements of the first set of scatterer parameters comprise a Doppler spectrum for each of unequally spaced path delays, and wherein each Doppler spectrum comprises a plurality of scattering coefficients and associated unequally spaced Doppler frequencies associated with corresponding scattering objects receiving signal samples over said wireless channel during a subsequent time interval; estimating a channel frequency response for said subsequent time interval wherein estimating the channel frequency response for the subsequent time interval further comprises: determining a second set of noise whitened channel frequency responses based on the signal samples received during the subsequent time interval; and determining an updated set of noise whitened channel frequency responses based on the first and second sets of noise whitened channel frequency responses; and wherein updating one or more scatterer parameters in the first set comprises updating the first set of scatterer parameters based on the updated set of noise whitened channel frequency responses to determine the updated set of scatterer parameters and updating one or more of the scatterer parameters in the first set based on the estimated channel frequency response to determine an updated set of scatterer parameters for the subsequent time interval.