(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 2, No.3, March 2011 62 | Page http://ijacsa.thesai.org/ Adaptive Equalization Algorithms:An Overview Garima Malik Electronics & Communication Engineering Punjabi University Patiala Punjab, India garimamalik82@gmail.com Amandeep Singh Sappal Electronics & Communication Engineering Punjabi University Patiala Punjab, India sappal73as@pbi.ac.in Abstract—The recent digital transmission systems impose the application of channel equalizers with short training time and high tracking rate. Equalization techniques compensate for the time dispersion introduced by communication channels and combat the resulting inter-symbol interference (ISI) effect. Given a channel of unknown impulse response, the purpose of an adaptive equalizer is to operate on the channel output such that the cascade connection of the channel and the equalizer provides an approximation to an ideal transmission medium. Typically, adaptive equalizers used in digital communications require an initial training period, during which a known data sequence is transmitted. A replica of this sequence is made available at the receiver in proper synchronism with the transmitter, thereby making it possible for adjustments to be made to the equalizer coefficients in accordance with the adaptive filtering algorithm employed in the equalizer design. In this paper, an overview of the current state of the art in adaptive equalization techniques has been presented. Keywords- Channel Equalizer; Adaptive Equalize; Least Mean Square; Recursive Least Squares. I. INTRODUCTION One of the most important advantages of the digital transmission systems for voice, data and video communications is their higher reliability in noise environment in comparison with that of their analog counterparts. Unfortunately most often the digital transmission of information is accompanied with a phenomenon known as intersymbol interference (ISI) [1]. Briefly this means that the transmitted pulses are smeared out so that pulses that correspond to different symbols are not separable. Depending on the transmission media the main causes for ISI are: • cable lines – the fact that they are band limited; • cellular communications – multipath propagation Obviously for a reliable digital transmission system it is crucial to reduce the effects of ISI and it is where the equalizers come on the scene. The need for equalizers [2] arises from the fact that the channel has amplitude and phase dispersion which results in the interference of the transmitted signals with one another. The design of the transmitters and receivers depends on the assumption of the channel transfer function is known. But, in most of the digital communications applications, the channel transfer function is not known at enough level to incorporate filters to remove the channel effect at the transmitters and receivers.For example, in circuit switching communications, the channel transfer function is usually constant, but, it changes for every different path from the transmitter to the receiver. But, there are also non stationary channels like wireless communications. These channels’ transfer functions vary with time, so that it is not possible to use an optimum filter for these types of channels. So, In order to solve this problem equalizers are designed. Equalizer is meant to work in such a way that BER (Bit Error Rate) should be low and SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) should be high. Equalizer gives the inverse of channel to the Received signal and combination of channel and equalizer gives a flat frequency response and linear phase [1] [4] shown in figure 1. Figure 1. Concept of equalizer The static equalizer is cheap in implementation but its noise performance is not very good [3]-[20]. As it is told before, most of the time, the channels and, consequently, the transmission system’s transfer functions are not known. Also, the channel’s impulse response may vary with time. The result of this is that the equalizer cannot be designed. So, mostly preferred scheme is to exploit adaptive equalizers. An adaptive equalizer is an equalization filter that automatically adapts to time-varying properties of the communication channel. It is a filter that self-adjusts its transfer function according to an optimizing algorithm. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In section II, discussed the basic concept of transversal equalizers are introduced followed by a simplified description of some practical adaptive equalizer. Different adaptation algorithms are discussed in section III. Many methods exist for both the identification and correction processes of adaptive equalization are presented in section IV. The application of adaptive filtering are covered briefly in section V. The conclusion along with future research directions are discussed in Section VI. II. CHANNEL EQUALIZATION As mentioned in the introduction the intersymbol interference imposes the main obstacles to achieving increased digital transmission rates with the required accuracy. ISI problem is resolved by channel equalization [5] in which the aim is to construct an equalizer such that the impulse response