Patent ID: 8194726

Claim:
A filter weight estimation device for an equalizer of a communication receiver, comprising: a tap delay line connected to N branches each comprising a descrambler and a despreader, for despreading received signals, corresponding to at least one available multiplexed channel associated with a channelization code, with a reference code to output a symbol, where N is an integer; an adaptive filter comprising N input filter taps respectively connected to said N branches and a regression input and arranged to output a reference symbol estimate; and an error computation module for subtracting said reference symbol estimate from a desired reference symbol to output an error signal that is fed to said regression input, wherein each despreader is arranged to despread the received signals with said reference code equal to a vector sum of all the channelization codes that have been used into a base station to spread different groups of user symbols associated to the different multiplexed channels, wherein said adaptive filter is arranged to estimate a symbol sum by said despreaders and associated to each available multiplexed channel, and arranged to implement a mechanism of a least mean square type to deliver a chosen number of filter weights, wherein said symbol sum constitutes a pseudo-symbol estimate defining said reference symbol estimate, and wherein said adaptive filter further comprises a multilevel quantizer arranged to quantize said reference symbol estimate in order to estimate said desired reference symbol.