Patent ID: 6888903

Claim:
A digital communication receiver adapted to communicate with a digital communication transmitter across a communication channel, the digital communication receiver comprising: a first channel estimator adapted to provide a channel estimate of the communication channel based on a received signal; an equalizer adapted to estimate a sequence of transmitted symbols and provide a sequence of decided symbols based on the received signal and the channel estimate; a channel tracker adapted to produce an updated channel estimate based on the received signal and the decided symbols and to supply the updated channel estimate to the equalizer; a controller operatively coupled to the equalizer and the channel tracker; wherein the controller is adapted to receive channel quality indicative data associated with an output from the equalizer, to determine whether the channel quality indicative data fail to meet a predetermined criterion, and, if so, to supply an enabling control signal to the channel tracker; and wherein the enabling control signal is adapted to switch the channel tracker from a disabled state, in which disabled state no channel tracker within the digital communication receiver is enabled, to an enabled state, in which enabled state the updated channel estimate is produced.