Bit error rate or bit error probability of a received signal of a wireless telecommunication system is estimated, wherein a channel impulse response is estimated from the received signal, and the received signal is subjected to a channel equalizing operation performed on the basis of time statistics derived from the channel impulse response. Additionally, adaptive reference time domain characteristics are calculated from a weighting information obtained from the channel impulse response estimation that may be used to perform a reference channel equalizing operation for obtaining an additional output signal to be compared with the output signal of the channel equalizing operation so as to determine an estimation of the bit error rate based on the detected difference.