<p>The invention relates to a method for carrier recovery of an equalized communications signal in a multiple-input multiple-output communications system. The method is comprised of the steps generating a phase rotation estimate from the equalized communications signal and a demodulated signal estimate of the equalized communications signal, and adjusting at least one of the phase and frequency of the equalized communications signal based on the phase rotation estimate. The step of generating the phase rotation estimate further comprising using a model based filter with the equalized communications signal as input signal to the model based filter and the demodulated signal estimate as a measurement to the model based filter.</p>