Patent ID: 7031383

Claim:
An apparatus including a compensation circuit for reducing intersymbol interference (ISI) products within a data signal, comprising: an input terminal that conveys an input data signal including a first plurality of ISI products and corresponding to a detected data signal received via a signal transmission medium; an output terminal that conveys an output data signal including a second plurality of ISI products which is smaller than said first plurality of ISI products; first adaptive equalization circuitry, coupled to said input terminal, that adaptively equalizes said input data signal to provide a first equalized signal; equalization and processing circuitry, coupled between said input and output terminals, that selectively equalizes and processes said input data signal and at least a portion of said output data signal to provide a processed signal, and includes second adaptive equalization circuitry, coupled to said input terminal, that adaptively equalizes said input data signal to provide a second equalized signal, signal slicing circuitry, coupled to said second adaptive equalization circuitry, that slices said second equalized signal to provide a sliced signal, and nonlinear processing circuitry, coupled between said signal slicing circuitry and said output terminal, that nonlinearly processes said sliced signal and said at least a portion of said output data signal to provide said processed signal; signal combining circuitry, coupled to said first adaptive equalization circuitry and said equalization and processing circuitry, that receives and subtracts said processed signal from said first equalized signal to provide a resultant signal; and output processing circuitry, coupled between said signal combining circuitry and said output terminal, that processes said resultant signal to provide said output data signal.