Patent ID: 8279979

Claim:
A signal processing apparatus that processes a signal transmitted over a transmission path that causes stationary distortion to occur in a waveform representing a signal value of a specific symbol in accordance with a value of a symbol transmitted before the specific symbol, the apparatus comprising: storage means for storing distortion characteristics, each of which is a characteristic of a waveform that represents the signal value of the specific symbol and is distorted in accordance with the value of the specific symbol and a separate combination of values of a specific number of symbols transmitted before the specific symbol, the storage means storing a number of different distortion characteristics (d) is equal to the following equation: d=x (y+1) where, x is a number of different possible symbols; and y is the specific number of symbols transmitted before the specific symbol; acquisition means for acquiring the signal value of the specific symbol from the signal transmitted over the transmission path; correlation coefficient calculation means for calculating a correlation coefficient between the waveform representing the signal value of the specific symbol acquired by said acquisition means and each of the distortion characteristics stored in said storage means with respect to combination of the values of the symbols; selection means for selecting one or more distortion characteristics having a high correlation with the waveform representing the signal value of the specific symbol acquired by said acquisition means, based on the correlation coefficients calculated by said correlation coefficient calculation means; and determination means for determining the values of the symbols in the signal transmitted over the transmission path based on the combination of the values of the symbols corresponding to each of the one or more distortion characteristics selected by said selection means.