A multilevel optical receiver can comprise a plurality of comparators that generally correspond with the number of levels in a multilevel data stream. Each comparator can be individually controlled and fed a decision threshold in order to decode a multilevel signal. The multilevel optical receiver can generate a statistical characterization of the received symbols in the form of a marginal cumulative distribution function (CDF) or probability density function (pdf). This characterization can be used to produce a set of .epsilon.-support estimates from which conditional pdfs are derived for each of the transmission symbols. These conditional pdfs may then be used to determine decision thresholds for decoding the received signal. The conditional pdfs may further be used to continuously estimate the fidelity or error rate of the received signal without the transmission of a testing sequence. The .epsilon.-supports may further be used to automatically control the gain on the receiver.