A method of communication comprises partitioning a single-carrier data stream into equal-size blocks, and partitioning each block into a plurality of equal-size sub-blocks. A first set of cyclic prefixes and/or postfixes is inserted into the blocks to allow a linear convolution of a frequency-selective multipath channel having a long delay spread to be modeled as a circular convolution at a receiver. A second set of cyclic prefixes and/or postfixes is inserted into the sub-blocks to allow a linear convolution of a frequency-selective multipath channel having a short delay spread to be modeled as a circular convolution at the receiver. Upon receiving a transmitted data frame from the multipath channel, the receiver measures a link quality index (LQI) of a short channel impulse response; and selects block-by-block equalization or sub-block by sub-block equalization based on the LQI.