At a node of a wireless network, equalization operations performed on signals received from a transmitter are adaptively switched to be equalized by an iterative turbo receiver or a linear receiver. A theoretical expression of a post-equalization SINR of a capacity-achieving receiver is used to estimate the post-equalization SINR performance of the turbo receiver. The estimated post-equalization SINR performance is then used as a basis to determine whether the received signal is to be equalized by the turbo receiver or the linear receiver.