Patent ID: 7406121

Claim:
An adaptive equalizer for equalizing a signal, the adaptive equalizer comprising: a feed-forward equalizer (FFE) to receive an input signal and generate a partially equalized signal from the input signal based on a plurality of coefficients associated with the feed-forward equalizer (FFE); a slicer to receive the partially equalized signal and generate decoded bit values based on the partially equalized signal; a signal quality circuit to receive the partially equalized signal from the feed-forward equalizer (FFE) and measure error in the partially equalized signal; and a convergence algorithm circuit to use a convergence algorithm for adjusting the coefficients associated with the feed-forward equalizer (FFE) based on the error measured in the partially equalized signal by the signal quality circuit, wherein values of the coefficient are not needed by the convergence algorithm to determine how much to adjust of the coefficients associated with the feed-forward equalizer (FFE).