Method of processing a received channel signal in a device to device communications link using multiple reference signals

A device for processing a received channel signal, the device comprising:

• a receiver configured to receive channel signals, wherein the channel signals include control channel data blocks of a control channel;
• and
• a signal detection module configured for detecting control channel blocks of the control channel, wherein the signal detection module includes machine readable instructions stored in a memory and executable by a processor to perform the steps of:
• (a) for a physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH) candidate in a resource grid, processing a received demodulation reference signal (DMRS) in a subframe of said resource grid associated with said PSCCH candidate to determine one or more potential PSCCHs for decoding, each of said one or more potential PSCCHs being identified by resource block (RB) position in the resource grid and a corresponding DMRS cyclic shift (ncs) value;
• (b) repeating step (a) for at least one other DMRS in said subframe to determine one or more potential PSCCHs for said at least one other DMRS;
• (c) selecting a subset L of PSCCHs from said potential PSCCHs determined by steps (a) and (b), where L is a number greater than zero and L<M where M comprises a number of possible RB candidate pairs in the resource grid;
• and
• (d) making said selected subset L of PSCCHs with their corresponding cyclic shift (ncs) values available for use in a decoding process for the received channel signal.