Patent ID: 8848834

Claim:
A method for detecting a format of a frame in a communication system, the method comprising: receiving the frame comprising a plurality of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols, wherein the plurality of OFDM symbols includes at least one signal field symbol, wherein the at least one signal field symbol comprises a plurality of sub-symbols having at least a real part and an imaginary part; determining a modulation associated with the at least one signal field symbol, wherein determining the modulation associated with the at least one signal field symbol further comprises: obtaining the real part and the imaginary part of each of the sub-symbols; computing absolute values associated with the real part of each of the sub-symbols; computing absolute values associated with the imaginary part of each of the sub-symbols; summing the absolute values associated with the real part of each of the sub-symbols; summing the absolute values associated with the imaginary part of each of the sub-symbols; and comparing the sum of the absolute values associated with the real part with the sum of the absolute values associated with the imaginary part to determine the modulation associated with the at least one signal field symbol, wherein the modulation includes one of a first modulation and a second modulation; estimating a position of the at least one signal field symbol among the plurality of symbols; extracting a coding rate of the received frame; and detecting the format of the received frame based on the determined modulation and the estimated position of the at least one signal field symbol, and the extracted coding rate of the received frame.