Patent ID: 7016650

Claim:
In a radio frequency receiver for receiving an M-ary symbol signal in a multi-path signal environment, a method of adaptively determining the guard time between successive symbols comprising the steps of: predetermining N estimates of possible guard times G n , wherein 0≦G n ≦T, wherein T is the symbol duration and wherein n=1 to N; receiving a transmitted symbol; providing the received symbol to M×N parallel processing units defined as P mn , where M is the number of possible symbols and wherein m=1 to M; in each of the plural parallel processing units P mn , multiplying the received waveform by a corresponding function F m to thereby form a product; integrating the product over a lower limit of integration equal to G n and an upper limit of integration equal to T in each of the corresponding plural parallel processing units P mn to thereby create M×N outputs; generating an estimate of multi-path distortion G e from the M×N outputs; and, selecting M parallel processing units P mk based on the estimate of multi-path distortion, where k is equal to n, where G n ≈G e , to thereby adaptively determine the guard time.