Patent ID: 8572144

Claim:
A circuit comprising: a signal processing circuit for accepting an input and for generating a set of outputs, the input being in an input range including a set of representative values, and each output representing a measure of an association of the input with one or more of the representative values, the signal processing circuit including: a plurality of output sections, each output section being responsive to the input of the signal processing circuit, each output section including: one or more configurable sigmoid generators, each sigmoid generator being configurable based on a channel characteristic of a communication channel over which the input is communicated and responsive to an input of the output section to generate an output that represents a sigmoid function of the input of the output section; and a circuitry for combining the outputs of the one or more sigmoid generators to form one of the set of outputs of the signal processing circuit; and an input transformation circuit coupled to the plurality of output sections, the input transformation circuit being configurable to transform the input of the signal processing circuit for controlling a mapping characteristic from the input to the set of outputs.