A propagation path estimation method for a receiver of a radio communication system in which band limiting of a signal is performed in signal transmission and reception. The method comprises: estimating an impulse response group of a propagation path of the signal; having the impulse response group pass through a filter (53) with a filter characteristic inverse of a band limiting filter characteristic for the band limiting; removing impulse responses corresponding to noise components from an output of the filter (53) by threshold judgement; and estimating the propagation path using impulse responses which are not removed. The method is capable of suppressing background noises regardless of propagation environments such as a delay spread or path intervals, so that the accuracy of propagation path estimation is significantly improved. |