Techniques for estimating the response of a communications channel. In an aspect, a channel autocorrelation matrix is derived based on, e.g., certain assumptions about the time delay profile, Doppler profile. An eigenvector decomposition is performed on the autocorrelation matrix, and a set of dominant eigenvectors is determined. A received pilot signal vector is projected onto a projection matrix derived from the dominant eigenvectors to generate a set of eigen-coefficients, which is then used to reconstruct an estimated channel vector. In an exemplary embodiment, the eigenvector-based approach is combined with a simplified minimum mean-square error based approach to generate an estimated channel vector when the received signal-to-noise ratio is below a threshold.