Patent ID: 8228974

Claim:
A method of recognizing an effect distorting a communication signal in a serial communication channel, comprising: defining a set of different symbol vectors formed of n>=2 successive communication symbols and a set of reference values of a critical characteristic of an i-th communication symbol of the symbol vectors, wherein a value from 1 to n is chosen for i; receiving a plurality of sequences of n communication symbols transmitted on the channel; for each of the symbol vectors, detecting the value of the critical characteristic of the i-th communication symbol in all received sequences corresponding to that symbol vector; comparing the set of values detected to the set of reference values and judging the effect to be present or not present based on the comparison; wherein the critical characteristic comprises a measure of a frequency with which the i-th communication symbol of the symbol vector is incorrectly identified after the symbol vector has been distorted by that effect; and determining, when one of the symbol vectors corresponds to the received sequence, whether the i-th one of the n symbols (i=1, . . . , n) of the sequence was correctly received, and conditionally incrementing a measurement value representative of the frequency of the incorrect identification of the i-th symbol in the sequence corresponding to the symbol vector based on the result of the determination.