Patent ID: 7835424

Claim:
A path selection method ( 1 ) for selecting paths of a multipath channel, comprising the steps of: selecting ( 2 ) a path from the various paths for which the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio is the highest instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio of the various paths; initializing ( 3 ) the output signal-to-noise ratio of the receiver to the highest instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio of the various paths; initializing ( 4 ) a current path to a path for which the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio is lower than the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio of the path previously selected and the highest instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio of the other paths; and the following steps, which are executed in a loop and comprise, for each iteration of the loop: selecting ( 7 ) the current path if an estimate of the relative contribution of the current path to the output signal-to-noise ratio of the receiver exceeds a given threshold and, if not, exiting ( 8 ) the loop; adding ( 9 ) to the output signal-to-noise ratio of the receiver the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio of the current path; and initializing ( 10 ) the current path to a path different from the preceding selected paths, for which the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio is the highest instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio of the various paths and lower than the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio of the last path previously selected.