Examples provide a method of performing automatic gain control (AGC) in a wireless receiver, the method including computing, by an energy detection (ED) circuit, a variance in an output signal of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and activating, by the ED circuit, an AGC circuit to adjust a gain of at least one component in a radio frequency integrated chip (RFIC) in response to the variance exceeding a threshold. Examples also provide for a wireless receiver that implements such a method.