Patent ID: 7177352

Claim:
A method of compensating for pre-cursor inter-symbol interference (ISI) in an input signal, where the input signal carries data symbols, the method comprising: generating a first adjusted version of the input signal in real time, said first adjusted version of the input signal compensating for pre-cursor ISI originating from a subsequent symbol of the input signal when a state of the subsequent symbol corresponds to a first state; generating a second adjusted version of the input signal in parallel with generating the first adjusted version, said second adjusted version compensating for pre-cursor ISI originating from the subsequent symbol of the input signal when the state of the subsequent symbol corresponds to a second state; generating a first hard decision output from the first adjusted version of the input signal; generating a second hard decision output from the second adjusted version of the input signal; and selecting an output symbol originating from the first hard decision output or the second hard decision output as a pre-cursor ISI-compensated output symbol.