1. A method for carrier recovery of an equalized communications signal in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications system, the method comprising: generating a phase rotation estimate from the equalized communications signal and a demodulated signal estimate of the equalized communications signal; adjusting at least one of the phase and frequency of the equalized communications signal based on the phase rotation estimate; wherein the generating the phase rotation estimate comprises using a first model based filter, with the equalized communications signal as input signal to the first model based filter and the demodulated signal estimate as a measurement to the first model based filter.