Patent ID: 8582703

Claim:
A method of operating a wireless receiver in a wireless communication network, the method comprising: receiving a signal, the received signal comprising data containing at least one symbol from a symbol alphabet, the symbol alphabet consisting of complex values that define a direction in the complex plane, the received signal further comprising interference; measuring the variance of a first component of the received signal that is perpendicular to the defined direction in the complex plane; estimating the interference power of the received signal using the measured variance of the first component of the received signal; estimating a total power of the received signal; estimating the power of the at least one symbol of the received signal by subtracting the estimated interference power from the estimated total power of the received signal; and based on the estimated interference power and the estimated power of the at least one symbol of the received signal, performing the step of: processing the received signal, and wherein the step of processing the received signal comprises the steps of: decoding the received signal, calculating reliability information, determining or scaling threshold values for the selection of one of a plurality of channel estimation algorithms, diverting processing resources, selecting one of a plurality of receiver processing or detection algorithms, and selecting one of a plurality of timing or frequency synchronization algorithms.