Patent ID: 8472566

Claim:
A method for detecting a signal at a receiver of a multi-antenna system, the method comprising: estimating a channel based on a reference pilot signal received through one of at least two streams and estimating a channel based on an additional pilot signal shared by the at least two streams; if the reference pilot signal is not allocated to a stream intended for the receiver: generating a vector orthogonal to the channel estimated based on the reference pilot signal, generating a first postcode based on the orthogonal vector, estimating a first channel gain based on the first postcode and the channel estimated based on the additional pilot signal, and detecting the signal based on the first postcode and the first channel gain; and if the reference pilot signal is allocated to a stream intended for the receiver: generating a second postcode based on the channel estimated based on the reference pilot signal, estimating a second channel gain based on the second postcode and one of the channel estimated based on the reference pilot signal and the channel estimated based on the additional pilot signal, and detecting the signal based on the second postcode and the second channel gain.