Analog signals encoded with quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) pass
through a coaxial cable at a particular baud rate. These signals have a
carrier frequency individual to the TV station being received. They are
mixed with signals from a variable frequency oscillator to produce
signals at a particular intermediate frequency (IF). An analog-digital
converter (ADC) converts the IF signals to corresponding digital signals
which are demodulated to produce two digital signals having a quadrature
phase relationship. After being filtered and derotated, the digital
signals pass to a symmetrical equalizer including a feed forward
equalizer (FFE) and a decision feedback equalizer (DFE) connected to the
FFE in a feedback relationship. The DFE may include a slicer providing
amplitude approximations of increasing sensitivity at progressive times.
Additional slicers in the equalizer combine the FFE and DFE outputs to
provide the output data without any of the coaxial cable noise or
distortions. The equalizer outputs and initially the derotation outputs,
and the slicer outputs, servo (1) the oscillator frequency to obtain the
IF frequency, (2) the ADC sampling clock to obtain the digital conversion
at a rate related to the particular baud rate and (3) the derotator. The
servos may have (1) first constants initially after a change in the
station selection and (2) second time constants thereafter. The ADC gain
is also servoed (1) initially in every ADC conversion and (2)
subsequently in every nth ADC conversion where n=integer>1. The above
recover the QAM data without any of the coaxial cable noise or
distortions.