Method and apparatus for selecting demodulation processing delays in a receiver

A receiver comprising an antenna and a baseband processor configured to select a set of demodulation processing delays for received signal demodulation from a larger set of candidate delays including path delays and other delays by forming a group of delays including some or all of the candidate delays, calculate a combining weight magnitude for the group of delays based on channel estimates determined for the candidate delays included in the group of delays and impairment correlations between the candidate delays included in the group of delays, iteratively reduce a number of candidate delays included in the group of delays by eliminating one or more of the candidate delays included in the group of delays based on the combining weight magnitude in an initial iteration, in one or more subsequent iterations recalculating the combining weight magnitude to reflect the elimination in a prior iteration of one or more of the candidate delays from the group of delays by removing entries from an impairment covariance matrix that correspond to the one or more candidate delays eliminated in the prior iteration, revising a channel coefficient vector by eliminating vector entries associated with the one or more candidate delays eliminated in the prior iteration and calculating combining weights using the recalculated impairment covariance matrix and the revised channel coefficient vector, and eliminating one or more of the candidate delays remaining in the group of delays based on the combining weight magnitude as recalculated in the current iteration, and set the processing delays for received signal demodulation to the candidate delays remaining in the group of delays after reduction.