1. A method of channel estimation for a received signal comprising: forming an initial least squares problem for medium channel estimates based on known pilot values and corresponding pilot observations for the received signal; calculating a whitening transformation term based on a Cholesky factorization of a traffic data correlation matrix determined for the received signal; applying the whitening transformation term to the initial least squares problem to obtain a transformed least squares problem; solving the transformed least squares problem to obtain whitened medium channel estimates for the received signal; and converting the whitened medium channel estimates to whitened net channel estimates for processing the received signal by applying a medium-to-net conversion matrix to the whitened medium channel estimates.