A digital front-end for a wireless communication system incorporates gain control, signal detection, frame synchronization and carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation and correction features configured for use with multiple receive antennas. The digital front-end may be applied to a wireless communication system in which transmitted signals carry a repeated signal pattern, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. An example of a repeated signal pattern is the preamble of a signal transmitted according to the IEEE 802.11a wireless local area network (WLAN) standard. The signal detection, frame synchronization, and CFO estimation techniques make use of signals received from multiple antenna paths to provide enhanced performance. The gain control feature may be configured to adjust the gain in steps. The frame synchronization technique may operate as a function of gain control, handling the input signal differently before and after gain adjustment.