Patent ID: 8879615

Claim:
A method of adjusting an equalizer in a digital communications circuit, the method comprising: a) selecting at least one reference sequence for which equalization is to be optimized, each reference sequence containing a corresponding target bit transition; b) generating phase error signals corresponding to observed transitions in an equalized signal, the phase error signals indicating phase errors of the observed transitions relative to average transition timings; c) generating transition signals indicating the presence or absence of the observed transitions in unit intervals of the equalized signal; d) generating recovered data sequences from the equalized signal; e) for each reference sequence, accumulating the phase error signals corresponding to observed transitions contained in the recovered data sequences matching the reference sequence when the observed transitions match the target bit transition corresponding to the reference sequence; f) for each reference sequence, accumulating the transition signals indicating a total number of the observed transitions in the equalized signal; and g) adjusting the equalizer according to a predefined metric function based on the accumulated phase error signals and the total number of the observed transitions for each selected reference sequence.