24 allowing the equalizer 24 to rely upon previously good channel estimates until the noise abates certain modifications of the present invention have been discussed above other modifications will occur to those practicing in the art of the present invention for example as described above the reliability weighting level r is a quantized value depending upon the difference between the absolute value of the walsh transform output spectral peak having the largest magnitude and the absolute value of the walsh transform output spectral peak having the next largest magnitude alternatively the reliability weighting level r may be determined solely from the walsh transform output spectral peak having the largest magnitude in this case the walsh transform output spectral peak having the largest magnitude might be used for example only if such peak has a magnitude greater than a threshold as a still further alternative the reliability weighting level r may be based upon the difference between the square of the absolute value of the walsh transform output spectral peak having the largest magnitude and the square of the absolute value of the walsh transform output spectral peak having the next largest magnitude also according to the description above a walsh transform is used to determine a transmitted code vector however other transforms may be used to determine the transmitted code vectors moreover as.