A noise and interference estimator and method for estimating noise and interference in a coordinated multipoint (CoMP) system at a mobile communication device is disclosed. The method comprises the operation of receiving a channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS) from a serving transmitting station at a user equipment (UE). Resource elements (REs) occupied by the CSI-RS of the serving transmitting station are muted on cooperating transmitting stations in the CoMP system. The operation of estimating a non-cooperating interference noise covariance matrix from the CSI-RS transmitted by the serving transmitting station follows.