Patent ID: 7751510

Claim:
A method of estimating a channel and an interference level of a wireless communication system comprising: a processor-implemented act of executing computer executable instructions stored on a computer readable storage medium to implement the following: receiving a plurality of data symbols for one or more users transmitted over a shared time frequency region; receiving a plurality of dedicated pilot symbols, for the one or more users, disposed among the plurality of data symbols in the time frequency region; estimating a power of interference for the time frequency region, wherein the estimate of the power of interference {circumflex over (σ)} 2 comprises: σ ^ 2 = 1 4 ⁢ M Q - 3 ⁢ Q ⁢ ( ∑ Q q = 1 ⁢  w 4 , q  2 + ∑ 4 l = 1 ⁢ ∑ q = Q + 1 M Q ⁢  w i , q  2 ) where the Q is a number of the one or more users that share the time frequency region, i is a number of cluster, M Q a number of the dedicated pilot symbols in a cluster, w is a power of interference, and q is a user; and estimating the channel parameters for the time frequency region using the estimate of the power of the interference.