Abstract: Apparatus, and an associated method, for facilitating recovery of digital data communicated to a receiving station upon a non-ideal channel. Sequences of the data are applied to a reliability indicia generator having a trellis of low-complexity. The reliability indicia generator generates reliability information which is provided to a soft trellis decoder. The soft trellis decoder includes a dynamically-formed trellis of trellis sizes dependent upon the reliability information provided by thereliability indicia generator. When the reliability indicia generator indicates certain nodes of the trellis used to perform MLSE operations to be reliable, such nodes are removed out of the trellis. The MLSE operations performed at the soft trellis are thereby of reduced complexity levels.

Abstract: Apparatus, and an associated method, for generating a message summary field. The message summary field indicates whether 802.11-formatted data packets are communicated upon a frequency range to which a mobile station operable in an IEEE 802.11 radio communication system is tuned. An indicator indicates whether an 802.11 data packet is detected. And, a reporter generates a measurement summary which includes a measurement summary field populated with a value indicating the determination. Subsequent analysis of the value of the field of the measurement summary is utilized pursuant to dynamic frequency selection operations.