Method and apparatus for restoring a soft decision component of a signal

An apparatus comprising:

• a receiver that receives a first received signal comprising a first signal and at least one other signal;
• at least one other receiver that receives one other received signal comprising the first signal and at least the one other signal;
• a branch weights determiner, operably coupled to the receiver and the at least one other receiver, that derives at least one branch weight associated with the first received signal and at least one other branch weight associated with the one other received signal;
• a signal combiner, operably coupled to the branch weights determiner, wherein the signal combiner combines the first received signal weighted by the at least one branch weight and the at least one other received signal weighted by the at least one other branch weight, yielding a combined signal;
• a mean square error estimate determiner, operably coupled to the branch weight determiner, that determines a mean square error for the combined signal;
• and
• a channel state information restorer, operably coupled to the signal combiner and the mean square error estimate determiner, that applies a function of the mean square error estimate to the combined signal to restore a soft decision component of the combined signal.