Patent ID: 6965638

Claim:
A digital communications system with a built-in apparatus for improving receive path performance in the presence of noise, comprising: an analog input, adapted to providing an analog datastream; a hardware receive filter, having an input coupled to the analog input and an output coupled to a hardware equalizer, adapted to filtering the analog datastream and rejecting signals lying outside a frequency spectrum of interest; the hardware equalizer, having an input coupled to the hardware receive filter and an output coupled to an analog-to-digital converter, adapted to making the channel response of a communications channel flat as function of frequency; the analog-to-digital converter, having an input coupled to the hardware equalizer and an output coupled to a software receive filter, adapted to digitizing the analog datastream into a digital bitstream; the software receive filter, having an input coupled to the analog-to-digital converter and an output coupled to an adaptive channel equalizer, adapted to further filter desired data signal from undesired noise; the adaptive channel equalizer, having an input coupled to the software receive filter and an output coupled to a baseband processor, adapted to equalizing the channel response of a communications channel; the baseband processor, having an input coupled to the adaptive channel equalizer and an output coupled to a digital device, adapted to demodulating and error detection and correction on the digital bitstream; the apparatus, having a data input coupled to the adaptive channel equalizer and an output coupled to the hardware receive filter and the hardware equalizer and the software receive filter and the adaptive channel equalizer, adapted to optimally setting the signal processing modem parameters for improving the receive path performance, wherein the apparatus further comprising: a memory, adapted to storing digital data; an estimator unit, having a first input coupled to the memory and a second input coupled to the data input, and an output coupled to a compute unit, the estimator unit is adapted to providing estimates of signal power, channel noise and channel response; and the compute unit, having an input coupled the estimator unit and the compute unit having an output coupled to the memory, adapted to computing a channel capacity based the selected combination of modem parameters.