Patent ID: 7245679

Claim:
A receiving apparatus, comprising: N(N≧3) pieces of receiving antennas; a channel impulse response estimator which estimates characteristics of channel impulse response of said N pieces of receiving antennas based on L(2≦L) pieces of transmission signals transmitted from said L pieces of transmission antennas among M(L≦M) pieces of transmission antennas; a weight generator for an interference canceller which calculates weight vectors to be multiplied by output signals of said N pieces of receiving antennas based on estimates of the characteristics of said channel impulse response; an array processing interference canceller which eliminates signal components relating to 0<I pieces of transmission signals from superposition signals obtained by superposing said L pieces of transmission signals via each propagation path, and extracts superposition signals obtained by superposing the signal components relating to two or more transmission signals from which signal components have not been eliminated, by multiplying the output signals of said N pieces of receiving antennas by said weight vectors, and adding together the multiplied results, wherein I≦N−2 in the case where said N is less than said L, and I=L−2 in the case where said N is not less than said L; a weight generator for a signal estimator which calculates weights to be used to calculate estimates of the receiving signal included in the output of said array processing interference canceller; a signal estimation circuit which separates and decodes individual transmission signals from the output signals of said array processing interface canceller by using the weights calculated by said weight generator for a signal estimator; a transmission signal classification apparatus which said L pieces of transmission signals into more than one groups each including one or more transmission signals; and a decoding order decision apparatus which decoding order of said more than one groups, wherein said array processing interface canceller eliminates only the signal component relating to a transmission signal component which does not belong to said group, based on the decoder order decided by said decoding order decision apparatus; wherein said signal estimation circuit separates and decodes the transmission signals in the group; and wherein said transmission signal classification apparatus classifies into one group the transmission signals from sets of the transmission antennas in which a cross-correlation value of the vector is larger than a threshold value, and classifies into another group the transmission signals in which the cross-correlation value of a vector is smaller than said threshold value, wherein L pieces of vectors are factors of the channel impulse response between said L pieces of transmission antennas and said N pieces of receiving antennas.