Communication system and method using signal to noise ratio estimation for scaling in processing received wireless communication signals

A wireless transmit receive unit (WTRU) comprising a receiver configured to implement forward error detection decoding (FEC) of received communication signals that includes:

• a demodulator configured to process received modulated communication signals for a particular communication channel and to produce demodulated signals;
• an observation window selection device configured to dynamically calculate window sizes defining a number of received samples for observation in a window based on characteristics of the received communication signals for the particular communication channel;
• a signal to noise ratio (SNR) estimation device configured to produce SNR estimates based the number of received samples in an observation window of a size calculated by the observation window selection device;
• a combiner device configured to produce adjusted demodulated signals based on the demodulated signals produced by the demodulator and the SNR estimates produced by the SNR estimation device;
• and
• an FEC decoder configured for decoding the adjusted demodulated signals and outputting decoded information bits.