Patent ID: 8311143

Claim:
A method for operating a communications module to generate an estimate of one or more transmitted symbols, comprising: generating a first set of n scaling factors, one per transmit antenna, each of the n scaling factors being based on a noise estimate and an expected received signal power level corresponding to the one of the n transmit antennas to which the scaling factor corresponds, wherein generating the first set of n scaling factors, one per n different antennas, includes selecting from a set of predetermined scaling factors a scaling factor to be used based on the pilot based noise estimate and the expected received signal power level corresponding to the one of the antennas to which the generated scaling factor corresponds; receiving a first set of n symbols transmitted from said n different antennas; and performing a first linear least squares error estimation on said first set of n symbols, as a function of the generated first set of n scaling factors, to generate for each of the received symbols in the first set of n received symbols an estimated transmitted symbol value, where n is a positive integer.