Patent ID: 7379445

Claim:
A method comprising: estimating platform noise power per tone information during a quiet period in a wireless device; receiving an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol from a wireless channel; and using said platform noise power per tone information to generate soft bits for said OFDM symbol for delivery to a Viterbi decoder within said wireless device, wherein using said platform noise power per tone information to generate soft bits includes: converting said OFDM symbol from a time domain representation to a frequency domain representation that includes a number of frequency domain data samples, each of said frequency domain data samples representing a received data symbol for a corresponding tone of said OFDM symbol; weighting said frequency domain data samples using said platform noise power per tone information; and delivering said weighted samples to a soft bit calculation unit for use in calculating soft bits, wherein said soft bit calculation unit assumes flat noise across the OFDM tones.