Patent ID: 8873615

Claim:
A controller for adaptively adjusting a dispersion compensation circuit in a receiver of a communication link, comprising: a first interface for receiving a signal from an error detector responsive to an output of the dispersion compensation circuit; and a logic engine coupled to the first interface and arranged to provide configuration information to the dispersion compensation circuit, the configuration information defining a digital filter in response to a tap constraint and a coefficient constraint, the logic engine further arranged to generate a measure of residual inter-symbol interference and a measure of noise enhancement penalty and iteratively generating a set of adjusted coefficient values that when applied in the digital filter will result in an equalized receiver output signal that minimizes a mathematical combination of the measure of the residual inter-symbol interference and the measure of the noise enhancement penalty, wherein the noise enhancement penalty is a function of an original noise prior to the dispersion compensation circuit and a square root of a sum of a set of ratios of the tap weights of non-reference taps divided by the tap weight of a reference tap where the set of ratios is squared.