Communication systems are known to enable a plurality of communication devices to

communicate among themselves and with communication devices in other

communication systems. Such communication devices may be computers, modems,
facsimile machines, printers, cell phones, and personal digital assistants. As the Internet
continues to become more popular, there is an increasing need for reliably accessing and
surfing the Internet at high speed and at low cost. The ever-increasing demand for high-
speed data communications services and greater bandwidth is largely due to the
popularity of the Internet and other data-intensive, high bandwidth applications. Both
businesses and consumers are demanding higher bandwidth connections and faster
Internet access. In particular, multimedia applications (which include textual, graphical,
image, video, voice and audio information) have become increasingly popular and find
usage in science, business, and entertainment. Local area networks (LANs) are essential
to the productivity of the modern workplace; Ethernet-type networks have dominated the
LAN market and have been continually enhanced (e.g., switched Ethernet, Fast Ethernet,
and/or Gigabit Ethernet) to keep pace with the bandwidth intensive multimedia
applications. A modem is a device that converts a desktop computer's digital data, for
example, into audio-frequency analog signals to be transmitted over a telephone channel,
and then back to digital form at the opposite receiving end. A modem may be connected
to a telephone line, with potentially several telephone lines together providing
connectivity to devices such as customer premises equipment (CPE), telephone sets and
facsimile machines. Modems also include functionality to dial the line, answer a call, and
control transmission speed. Modems provide part of the interface between subscriber
lines and a digital network such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
Standard analog modems (modulator / demodulator devices) used to be commonplace in
the home and office environments, where they are used to enable electronic devices, such
as personal computers, to transmit data over existing telephone lines to other electronic
devices. Data is stored digitally in such devices, but is converted by an analog modem to
be transmitted over the lines in analog form. Usually, a signal received on a local loop
causes a corresponding signal to be transmitted on a telephone line and the receiving
devices thus receive the signal on the telephone lines. Because the lines used by analog
modems to transmit data only use a frequency range of about 0 3400 Hz, a data
transmittance limit of about 56,000 bits-per-second (bps) exists for communication
through the lines. As data and information transfer is becoming more and more
voluminous and complex, using traditional data links such as analog voice-band modems
is too slow in speed. The ability to provide such desired services as video on demand,
television (HDTV), video catalogs, remote CD-ROMs, high-speed LAN access,
electronic library viewing, etc., are similarly limited by the lack of high speed
connections. The rapid increase in use and popularity of the Internet has motivated
research and development of systems directed to advanced communication of information
between remotely located computers, particularly in effecting higher bit-rates using
existing infrastructure. One type of technology arising from this development is referred
to in the art as digital subscriber line (DSL).

Digital subscriber line (DSL) is a modem technology that allows existing copper
telephone lines to carry high bandwidth information. DSL technology provides one
approach to addressing the demand for high-speed telecommunications service. DSL
technology utilizes a modem both at a customer's location and a remote location, such as
a service provider's central office. These modems allow communication between the
customer and the service provider according to a DSL protocol. DSL modem elements
permit high data rate transmission of data over the public switched telephone network
(PSTN) at multiple megabit speeds using sophisticated signal processing techniques that
permit voice and data to travel simultaneously over the same analog copper twisted pair
wire. The frequencies at which data are transmitted and received according to DSL
technology are higher than the frequency spectrum used for voice traffic on a standard
telephone line. DSL modems typically perform three functions including voice and data
separation, channel separation, and encoding and decoding. DSL uses one of a number of
technologies to encode and decode data on a single carrier frequency. These technologies
include quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), carrierless amplitude and phase (CAP)
modulation, and discrete multi-tone (DMT) modulation. Digital data is transported across
the PSTN by converting the data into an analog signal that is transmitted by varying, or
modulating, the frequency, phase, amplitude or other characteristic of a carrier signal.
The modulation is performed by a DSL modem attached to a standard telephone line
referred to as a "local loop". When analog signals are received from other DSL modems
in the PSTN, the receiving DSL modem performs an opposite function by demodulating
the received analog signal to convert it back into digital data. A DSL modem
conventionally has a component referred to as a plain old telephone service (POTS)
splitter, which divides the existing phone line to two bands, one for voice and one for
data. Voice travels between zero and four kilohertz. The higher frequencies are used for
data. Another component in a DSL modem, referred to as a channel separator, divides the
data into two parts. Typically a DSL network comprises a plurality of customer premise
equipment (CPE) devices connected to a DSLAM (digital subscriber line access
multiplexer) via a bundle of twisted-pair wires. The DSLAM is also connected to a
network for sending and receiving data to and from the respective CPE. The DSLAM
may further be connected to other devices, such as routers, for directing and switching
data through the DSL network. A DSLAM comprises a plurality of DSL modems which
may be implemented in software residing on one or more digital signals processors
(DSP). Certain DSL systems provide a downstream data transfer rate from the DSL
point-of-presence (POP) to the subscriber location. Since the digital subscriber line
provides a plurality of separate channels used for transmission of audio telephone signals,
such as audio sound, fax, etc., the digital subscriber line serves high speed data
communications to be transmitted and received or both the audio telephone signals and
the high speed data communications to be simultaneously transmitted and received
through the conventional telephone line. Digital subscriber lines (DSL) technology and
improvements thereon including: ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line), VDSL
(very high bit-rate digital subscriber line), SDSL (symmetric digital subscriber line),
MDSL (multi-rate digital subscriber line), RADSL (rate adaptive digital subscriber line),
HDSL (high bit-rate digital subscriber line), etc. all of which are broadly identified as X-
DSL or xDSL have been developed to increase the effective bandwidth of existing
subscriber line connections.

One type of DSL technology is referred to as asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL)
and corresponds to the ANSI standard T1.43. ADSL is a high-speed communication
technology that allows one client modem, such as that at a remote terminal (RT), to be
connected to only one central office (CO) modem through one twisted pair telephone line
forming a loop. Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) modems transmit high rate
digital data over existing twisted pair telephone lines to connect residential customers to
digital networks. A frequency duplexed ADSL modem transmits in one frequency band
and receives in a second, disjoint frequency band. ADSL modems use two competing
modulation schemes: discrete multi-tone (DMT) and carrierless amplitude/phase
modulation (CAP). Discrete multitone (DMT) is a modulation technique commonly
employed in various digital subscriber line (xDSL) communication systems. Discrete
multi-tone modulation is an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)
technique based on modulating bits on a sequence of N baseband tones (sub-channels or
bins), generally evenly spaced. A DMT line code comprises multiple bins or subchannels
implemented through a discrete fourier transform (DFT). Each bin is independently
modulated to some carrier frequency. The number of bins available to carry information
is generally equal to or slightly less than half of the DFT size. ADSL technology is a
popular choice for high-speed data transmission over existing telephone infrastructures.
A digital modem operable under the ADSL protocol, used for data transmission, is about
100 times faster than a conventional analog modem having data transfer rate of 56 Kbps.
Another advantage of ADSL is that a telephone line is still available for use as a voice
connection or for an analog modem connection when ADSL traffic is passing through the
line. This is made possible by splitters at both ends of the line that separate the ADSL
signals and conventional telephone signals at either end. A host-signal processing (HSP)
based ADSL modem implements most of its ADSL modulation functions via the
computer processor. Therefore, it reduces the need for a separate high-speed digital signal
processor (DSP). Through software implementation, it also has advantages for
programming flexibility. It allows an easy software update for improved protocols and
algorithms for better performance and new standards requirement.