US Patent 7167517 Analog N-tap FIR receiver equalizer

An equalizer includes plural samplers for sampling an incoming input data stream according to plural phases of a sampling clock, each sampler producing a data sample. Operating in the analog domain, a multi-tap finite impulse response (FIR) filter weights the data samples and combines the weighted data samples to produce a filtered data bit. The filtered data bits thus form an equalized output data stream. The equalizer can compensate for characteristics of a communications channel, such as low-pass characteristics. The channel may carry high-speed, e.g., multi-gigabit per second, traffic.