Method and apparatus for estimating gain offsets for amplitude-modulated communication signals

Abstract

A method of processing an amplitude-modulated traffic signal involves the determination of a gain offset between the traffic signal and a reference signal, e.g., a pilot signal, received in association with the traffic signal, based on relating values known or determined from the reference signal to that gain offset. For example, in at least one embodiment of a wireless communication receiver, one or more processing circuits are configured to compute the gain offset based on the average magnitude of estimated traffic symbols and a signal-to-noise ratio. The received traffic symbols can be estimated using soft combining weights calculated from the reference signal, as can the signal-to-noise ratio. With the gain offset thus determined, the estimated traffic symbols can be scaled properly for subsequent processing, such as in log-likelihood ratio processing to recover the traffic signal data.

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