Method and apparatus for interference estimation in wireless communication networks

A method for estimating interference in a digital communication signal, wherein the digital communication signal comprises a common reference signal and a transmitted data, the method comprising:

• determining a first interfering channel matrix for a first interfering cell based on a channel estimation of the common reference signal;
• estimating a first power offset ratio and a first effective pre-coding matrix for the first interfering cell by evaluating a maximum likelihood metric, wherein the maximum likelihood metric is based on a first interfering channel correlation;
• reconstructing a channel covariance matrix based on the estimated first power offset ratio and the first effective pre-coding matrix;
• and
• detecting the transmitted data based on the reconstructed channel covariance matrix.

A non-transitory memory for storing computer-readable program comprising program code that, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to:

• receive a digital communication signal, wherein the digital communication signal comprises a common reference signal and transmitted data;
• determine a first interfering channel matrix for a first interfering cell based on a channel estimation of the common reference signal;
• estimate a first power offset ratio and a first effective pre-coding matrix for the first interfering cell by evaluating a maximum likelihood metric, wherein the maximum likelihood metric is based on a first interfering channel correlation;
• reconstruct a channel covariance matrix based on the estimated first power offset ratio and the first effective pre-coding matrix;
• and
• detect the transmitted data based on the reconstructed channel covariance matrix.