Patent ID: 7471745

Claim:
A receiver for demodulating data transmitted in the form of a packet sent over a data channel during a packet transmission in a multi-carrier modulation communication system, each data channel having a plurality of subchannels, each packet including a preamble, a header and a data payload, the receiver comprising: a baseband processor coupled to receive the data transmitted for processing the plurality of baseband sample signals to calculate a gain estimation (h i ) of each subchannel, wherein the baseband processor generates a channel quality estimation metric (M) derived by deinterleaving a sequence of gain estimation magnitudes (|h i |), convolving the deinterleaved sequence of gain estimation magnitudes (|h i |) with a window function comprised of samples of approximately equal magnitude, and detecting the number of times the convolution falls beneath a predetermined threshold; a deinterleaver coupled to the baseband processor to deinterleave the processed plurality of baseband sample signals to provide a deinterleaved signal sequence; and a channel decoder coupled to receive the deinterleaved signal sequence to decode the sequence.