Abstract: Methods and apparatus for avoiding overflow and underflow conditions through the determination of appropriate scaling factors in signal estimation processing in a receiver are described. The receiver estimates transmitted symbols from one or more transmitter device antennas, while avoiding underflow and overflow conditions. A pilot based noise estimate and an estimated expected received signal power, corresponding to a transmit antenna, are used to generate an SNR corresponding to the transmit antenna. The generated SNR is used to determine, e.g., select from a fixed size set of predetermined scale factor values, a scale factor to be used for estimation processing associated with the transmit antenna. In some embodiments, the generated scaling factors are used by a fixed point processing linear least squares error estimation module. Scaling factor determination is performed at a rate which is slower than the rate at which symbols are received from a transmit antenna.