A method for calculating filter coefficients for an equalizer in a communication receiver, the method including the steps of calculating (22) channel response matrices G and H from channel estimation inputs; performing (24) a Cholesky decomposition of the channel response matrix G into a lower triangular matrix L and an upper triangular matrix U; performing (26) forward substitution on the lower triangular matrix L to calculate a column vector d; performing (28) backward substitution on the column vector d and the Hermitian transpose LH of the lower triangular matrix L to calculate a middle column c0 of the inverse G−4 of the channel response matrix G; and calculating (30) the filter coefficients from the middle column c0 of the inverse channel response matrix G−1 and the Hermitian transpose HH of the response matrix H.