Patent ID: 8385397

Claim:
A method of determining a step size of an adaptive equalizer for a digital data receiver, data received by the receiver including coded symbols and uncoded symbols, the method comprising: determining a first error estimate based on decoded symbols corresponding to the coded symbols; determining a second error estimate based on the uncoded symbols; comparing the first error estimate to an error estimate threshold value; continuously adaptively selecting one of the determined first error estimate and the determined second error estimate based on the comparison to the error estimate threshold value, wherein, when the first error estimate is less than the error estimate threshold value, the first error estimate is selected, and when the first error estimate is greater than the error estimate threshold value, the second error estimate is selected, and wherein, when no uncoded symbols are available to determine the second error estimate, a previously calculated value for the second error estimate is used for the adaptive selection of one of the determined first error estimate and the determined second error estimate; and determining a step size based on the selected error estimate.