Patent ID: 8743945

Claim:
An apparatus for applying decision feedback equalization to an input signal, comprising: a set of fixed taps and a set of floating taps, wherein each tap corresponds to a detected symbol of the input signal with a period based on the symbol period, and wherein each of the floating tap detected symbols is stored in a corresponding shift register, wherein the shift register is configured to account for process, operating voltage and temperature (PVT) variations of the apparatus, thereby without calibration of one or more delay elements of the apparatus to account for PVT, wherein the floating taps are divided into even-phase floating taps and odd-phase floating taps, each corresponding to either even phases or odd phases of the sampling period of the input signal, the symbol values of the even-phase floating taps are stored in a first shift register and the symbol values of the odd-phase floating taps are stored in a second shift register; multiplexing logic configured to (i) select corresponding floating taps for equalization wherein outputs of the selected floating taps are coupled to the outputs of the fixed taps, (ii) select different phases of the input signal for each floating tap, and (iii) at least one of: prune and amalgamate the phases of each possible floating tap position to select the corresponding ones of the floating taps based on a magnitude of each phase, wherein the multiplexing logic couples selected outputs of each even-phase floating tap to the corresponding even-phase fixed taps and couples selected outputs of each odd-phase floating tap to the corresponding odd-phase fixed taps; and a combiner configured to (i) adjust each output value of one or more of the fixed taps and the output values of one or more of the selected floating taps by a corresponding tap-weight coefficient and (ii) combine the tap-weight coefficient adjusted values into an output signal, wherein the output signal of the combiner is subtracted from the input signal.