For use in a digital signal processing system, a filter implementation factors in the time difference between consecutive searches for the same signal and modifies the filter depending on the time-arrival differences of consecutive search results. An example application to which the invention is particularly well adapted is in a mobile receiver for a cellular radiotelephone communications system. In accordance with the present invention, after determining a relative arrival time of data sample sets in the stream of data samples, the mobile station includes a receiver arrangement configured to filter a stream of data samples arriving at irregular intervals, to provide a relative arrival time of data sample sets in the stream of data samples, and in response to determining the relative arrival time, to filter the data sample sets using value assignments that are exponentially weighted for the data sample sets. The data sample sets are weighted more than data sample sets arriving early. In a more specific implementation, the receiver arrangement searches the data sample sets for a signal strength signal, and filters the data sample sets based on time-arrival differences of consecutive search results.