Patent ID: 7440525

Claim:
An enhanced dynamic range receiver for receiving an incoming signal and processing the incoming signal, the receiver having an equalization capability without degrading the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the signal, comprising: a plurality of variable gain amplifiers (VGAs) alternately connected in series with a plurality of equalizers to form a VGA-equalizer chain and adapted to receive the incoming signal, the VGA-equalizer chain operable to generate a first analog signal; a first peak detector (PD) adapted to receive the first analog signal and operable responsive to the first analog signal to generate a first peak value; a second PD adapted to receive a second analog signal at a selected node in the VGA-equalizer chain and operable responsive to the second analog signal to generate a second peak value; a slicer adapted to receive the first analog signal and the first peak value and operable to generate a first digital signal; a clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit adapted to receive the first digital signal and operable to generate a data and a clock signal; an equalizer control circuit adapted to receive the first digital signal and the clock signal and operable responsive to the first digital signal and the clock signal to vary the equalizers' coefficient values; a gain control circuit adapted to receive the second peak value and operable responsive to the second peak value to vary the gain of the VGAs.