Patent ID: 8081677

Claim:
A receiver based equalization apparatus for automatically eliminating inter-symbol interference caused by a serial communication channel for a binary, Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ), incoming serial data stream without requiring transmit pre-equalization, comprising: i) a programmable continuous equalizer to condition said incoming serial data stream to produce an equalized continuous output serial data stream; and ii) control means operable to control said programmable continuous equalizer based on said incoming serial data stream; wherein said programmable continuous equalizer comprises two compensation stages, a post-cursor compensation stage cascaded with a pre-cursor compensation stage; wherein said post-cursor compensation stage is configured to provide two signal paths to condition the received incoming serial data stream, one signal path being a controllable pure gain stage, and the other signal path being an independently controllable pure gain stage coupled to a high-pass filter, a combined output of both gain stages being supplied to said pre-cursor compensation stage.