Embodiments herein provide using extreme value theory (EVT) as a diagnostic to decide which taps are significant. In the low SINR scenario, embodiments herein also provide the following options; i) Fix the model order to a finite value smaller than the model order assumed for the initial CIR estimate. In the case of OFDM based systems, the model order of the CIR is fixed to a value much smaller that the cyclic prefix length. ii) Use the EVT based method to detect significant tap locations and only keep those tap locations such that the CIR length is again restricted to a value smaller than the model order of the initial channel estimate.