Abstract: A channel in a multiple carrier communication system is equalized by computing a desired spectral response, shortening the impulse response of the channel so that a significant part of an energy of the impulse response is confined to a region that is shorter than a target length and filtering the signal based on the desired spectral response. A multiple carrier communication system may include a primary impulse shortening filter that receives an output signal of an analog to digital converter and accepts coefficients. A secondary impulse shortening filter may receive the output signal of the analog to digital converter, output an output signal, and pass coefficients to the primary impulse shortening filter. A reference signal generator may output a reference signal. A comparator may compare the output signal and the reference signal and output a resulting error signal. An adaptive processor may compute coefficients for the secondary impulse shortening filter based on the error signal.

Abstract: The specification discloses methods and apparatus for selecting the better of two or more copies of a cell in a cell-oriented redundant switching system connected to an external communications network. In the preferred embodiment, the best cell copy selection aligns redundantly transmitted cell streams before selecting cells for insertion in the data stream. Because the streams are aligned before the selection is made, the best cell copy selector compares each cell at the same instant in time, rather than basing its selection on past events.