Multipath components of a signal transmitted through a time-varying digital radio channel are received with individual delays (.tau.) within a range of possible delay values. An instantaneous delay profile indicating an instantaneous magnitude (g(.tau.)) for each of a number of individual delays (.tau.) is calculated repetitively, and an averaged delay profile indicating an averaged magnitude for the individual delays is generated from a number of repetitively calculated instantaneous delay profiles. The averaged delay profile is limited to comprise only delay values in a subset (W.sub.1, W.sub.2, W.sub.3) of the range of possible delay values. The delay of each individual multipath component is estimated from the averaged delay profile; and at least some estimated delays are used for RAKE combining. In this way, the benefits of an averaged delay profile are achieved without the need for the additional storage and computational resources normally required by a general averaged delay profile image.