Patent ID: 6947373

Claim:
Optimal estimation method of a propagation channel in which: a signal is received having passed through said channel, this signal comprising blocks of symbols either monodimensional in time or frequency, or bidimensional in time and frequency, each block containing N digital symbols with N p pilot symbols and N D data symbols, the signal received is modelled by a signal vector denoted R having N components, the propagation channel is modelled by a multiplicative discrete channel vector C having N components, from signal vector R an estimation Ĉ is inferred of discrete channel vector C, this method being characterized in that: for each block transmitted, using signal vector R, a restriction vector R p of this vector is calculated, limited to the N p pilot symbols, using the multiplicative discrete channel vector C, a restriction vector C p is calculated limited to the pilot symbols, an orthonornal base {B Pl } l=0 Np-1 is defined made up of the N p natural vectors of the covariance matrix H of restriction vector C p of the discrete channel, said matrix having N p natural values denoted Γ l (l=0, 1, 2, . . . , N p −1), the restriction vector R p of the signal received in said orthonormal base {B Pl } l=0 Np-1 is broken down and N p components G l are obtained (G l =B Pl *T R p with l=0, 1, . . . , N p −1), the orthonormal base {B Pl } l=0 Np-1 is extended to the N D data symbols to obtain an extended base {B l } l=0 Np-1 the desired optimal estimation Ĉ is obtained of the equivalent channel vector C by calculating the sum ∑ l = 0 N p - 1 ⁢ ⁢ w l ⁢ G l ⁢ B l in which the w l are N p weighting factors defined by 1/1+N 0 /Tl) in which N 0 is the noise variance.