Patent ID: 7239664

Claim:
A method for selecting a data rate for a pulse code modulation (PCM) upstream transmission, comprising: determining a transmit power limit from a training event TRN1 u; determining an approximate transmit power before the upstream transmission reaches a transmit equalizer based on a precoder power output and a distance halfway between an outermost constellation point and a point following the outermost point, where the data rate is determined by the total number of points in the constellation and therefore of the outermost points in the constellation; determining a total transmit power on a line at an output of the transmit equalizer by multiplying the determined approximate transmit power before the transmit equalizer by the power gain of the transmit equalizer as commonly calculated as a norm squared of the equalizer taps; and selecting a data rate so that the total transmit power is less than the transmit power limit, power is a function of the number of possible input data points per symbol (M); the higher the symbol rate and more constellation points then the higher the data rate.