EQUALIZATION AND DECODING FOR DIGITAL COMMUNICATION CHANNEL

An equalizer/decoder for a communication channel presenting impairments to error-free reception of transmitted symbols includes a modified Viterbi decoder operating on samples of received signals in a plurality of equivalent subchannels. Estimates of each of the subchannels are updated using a locally best estimate in the Viterbi trellis processing, thereby avoiding delay in updating channel estimates in a rapidly changing channel such as a digital cellular communications channels. A leaky predictor channel updating technique also proves advantageous in an alternative embodiment.