This disclosure describes a receiver having equalization with noise de-whitening mitigation for wireless communication. An input port receives, via an antenna, a signal communicated over a wireless communication link, the signal comprising a noise component. Control circuitry performs zero forcing equalization of the received signal to generate a zero forcing equalization result signal. The zero forcing equalization causes de-whitening of the noise component by increasing a correlation among elements of the noise component. The control circuitry mitigates the de-whitening of the noise component by: determining a noise variance value based on channel properties of the wireless communication link, and modifying the zero forcing equalization result signal based on the noise variance value. The modified zero forcing equalization result signal is communicated, via an output port, to log-likelihood ratio (LLR) generation circuitry for LLR computation.