Adaptive frequency correction in a wireless communications system, such as for GSM and IS54

In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, a method for compensating frequency offset errors in a communication system comprising the steps of receiving a plurality of signal bursts that correspond to a plurality of transmitted signal bursts. A channel estimation is performed based on at least the predetermined information contained in the transmitted signal bursts. For each received signal sample, a Viterbi decoding is performed using the channel estimations. A final updated Viterbi state cost is calculated for each received signal. A good equalizer quality signal is provided when the final updated Viterbi state cost is below a given threshold. The transmitted signal bursts are then reconstructed from the receive signal bursts, by applying the channel estimation to reencode the decoded signal bursts retrieved from the Viterbi decoder. The quality of the channel estimation is determined based on a given threshold of bit error rate in a plurality of received signal bursts. The frequency offset error is updated in accordance with the reconstructed transmitted signals, when the quality of the channel is such that the bit error rate in the received signal bursts is below the given threshold and, when the good equalizer quality signal is provided. Each received signal is adjusted in accordance with the updated frequency offset error.