Patent ID: 8477894

Claim:
A method of processing a signal to provide a channel characterization of a communication channel through which the signal is communicated, comprising: receiving the signal, wherein the signal comprises an encoded digital packet, wherein the digital packet includes packet data and a packet frame, wherein either one of, or both of, the packet data include or the packet frame includes a common digital signal that is common to each one of a plurality of digital packets, wherein the common digital signal is part of a native structure of the digital packet; sampling a signal representative of the received signal to provide a sampled signal; generating a predetermined replica signal prior to the receiving and prior to the sampling, wherein the predetermined replica signal is representative of the common digital signal, and wherein the predetermined replica signal is neither extracted from nor derived from the received signal or from the sampled signal; performing the channel characterization, wherein the performing the channel characterization comprises: replica correlating a signal representative of the sampled signal with the predetermined replica signal in a replica correlation, wherein the replica correlation is not an autocorrelation of the sampled signal with itself; and generating a measured signal characteristic value indicative of a characteristic of the communication channel in accordance with the replica correlation; and altering a filter characteristic of a filter in accordance with the measured signal characteristic value.