Abstract: A novel and useful channel tracking mechanism operative to generate channel estimate updates on blocks of samples during reception of a message. The tracking mechanism is based on the weighted recursive least squares algorithm and implements the estimation process by recursively updating channel model parameters upon the arrival of new sample data. The mechanism is operative to update channel estimate information once per sample block. An interblock exponential weighting factor is also applied. The block length is chosen short enough to enable good tracking performance while being sufficiently long enough to minimize the overhead of generating preliminary decisions and of updating precalculated tables in the equalizer. The method of the invention can be performed in either hardware or software. A computer comprising a processor, memory, etc. is operative to execute software adapted to perform the channel tracking method of the present invention.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for performing a radix-4 fast Hadamard transform (FHT) with reduced complexity and for directly determining the maximum output of a fast Hadamard transform using either a radix-4 transform or radix-2 transform without actually generating the outputs. The radix-4 fast Hadamard transform is implemented using only seven operations. To find the maximum value of the output of a fast Hadamard transform and its corresponding index, the N?1 stages of a conventional N stage fast Hadamard transform are computed while a find-maximum stage is inserted in place of the Nth stage. The invention also provides a methodology for constructing fast Hadamard transforms of the form H2N using radix-4 FHTs and permuting the results to achieve the correct outputs.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for performing a radix-4 fast Hadamard transform (FHT) with reduced complexity and for directly determining the maximum output of a fast Hadamard transform using either a radix-4 transform or radix-2 transform without actually generating the outputs. The radix-4 fast Hadamard transform is implemented using only seven operations. To find the maximum value of the output of a fast Hadamard transform and its corresponding index, the N-1 stages of a conventional N stage fast Hadamard transform are computed while a find-maximum stage is inserted in place of the Nth stage. The invention also provides a methodology for constructing fast Hadamard transforms of the form H2N using radix-4 FHTs and permuting the results to achieve the correct outputs.