1. A method, in a communications receiver, for obtaining smoothed channel response estimates, the method comprising: performing a plurality of channel response measurements corresponding to a path delay or to a signal frequency, or both, to obtain ordered channel measurement samples for a current estimation interval; for each of a first subset of a set of pre-determined filter responses, filtering the ordered channel measurement samples to obtain a corresponding set of estimated channel response samples; for each set of estimated channel response samples, calculating a corresponding set of ordered residuals from the channel measurement samples; evaluating each set of ordered residuals to determine a measure of correlation among the ordered residuals; and selecting an updated filter response from a second subset of the set of pre-determined filter responses, based on said evaluating, for use in demodulating a received signal.