Patent ID: 6868120

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for measuring a Ricean K-factor of a wireless channel in real-time, comprising the steps of: (a) obtaining an incoming amplitude sample; (b) computing a magnitude squared of the incoming amplitude sample to obtain a power gain and computing a magnitude squared of the power gain; (c) calculating a sum of the power gain and a sum of the magnitude squared of the power gain for a incoming window of amplitude samples; (d) final averaging the sums of the window of amplitude samples to estimate the first and second moments of the window of incoming amplitude samples; (e) inputting the final average to obtain estimates for the time average of the power gain Ga and rms deviation of the power gain Gv about Ga: G ^ a = 1 N ⁢ ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ x i ⁢ ⁢ and , G ^ v = 1 N ⁢ ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ x i 2 - G ^ a 2 ; and (f) computing the K-factor in accordance with: K = G a 2 - G v 2 G a - G a 2 - G v 2 .