Method of processing received signals, corresponding receiver and computer program product therefor

Abstract

Signals received from channels exposed to multi-path propagation via a plurality of diversity antennas and including at least one pilot signal are processed by detecting a set of multi-path components for each received signal and computing a set of channel coefficients from multi-path components of the at least one pilot signal in the set of multi-path components. The set of channel coefficients is organized as a channel coefficient vector. From the channel coefficient vector, a set of combining weights is estimated to be applied to the received signals by: computing a spatial correlation matrix of the channel coefficient vector by neglecting the correlations between multi-path components of the channel coefficient vector having different delays, whereby the correlation matrix is a block diagonal matrix including null coefficients other than for non-null sub-matrixes arranged along the diagonal of the correlation matrix, wherein the sub-matrixes have a size equal to the number of diversity antennas; deriving from the spatial correlation matrix a resulting matrix by calculating the inverse of the sub-matrixes or a scaled version thereof; and multiplying the resulting matrix and the channel coefficient vector in order to obtain the desired set of combining weights.