In a UMTS (universal mobile telecommunications system) based system, a wireless receiver implements "effective signal-to-noise (E.sub.b/N.sub.o) based BER estimation." In particular, the wireless receiver comprises a rake receiver, a processor and memory. The rake receiver processes a received signal and provides signal-to-noise ratio values for each slot of each received frame of the received signal. The processor converts these signal-to-noise ratio values for each received frame into an effective signal-to-noise ratio value for the received signal. The processor then uses the effective signal-to-noise ratio value as a pointer, or index, into a look-up table (stored in the memory) and retrieves a BER estimate therefrom.