An efficient method and apparatus for reducing the effect of ghost signals during the recovery of information bits in wireless systems. The delay spread between each burst and its ghost are estimated so that an equalizer is only engaged to eliminate the effects of the ghost on data recovery when the delay spread increases beyond a given threshold. The estimation of the nonstationary delay spread is based on the estimation of the impulse response of the wireless channel. That is, the response of how the burst and its ghost will be reflected in the wireless channel. Since, the burst and its ghost arrive at the receiver .tau. symbol times apart and have different and random power with respect to each other, once the channel impulse is accurately estimated, the value of .tau. can be used to determine whether to engage or disengage an equalizer. That is, the equalizer is only turned on if .tau. is beyond a predetermined threshold, wherein the threshold is chosen depending on the needs and/or specifications of the system performance.