Statistics of error recovery times of decision feedback equalizers

New upper and lower bounds to the mean recovery time of decision feedback equalization (DFE) are derived. The recovery time is defined as the time it takes the decision feedback equalizer (DFEQ) to reach the error free state after an error has corrupted an error free DFEQ. The derivations of the bounds assume a causal channel response, independent data symbols, and independent noise samples. The bounds are found to be tighter, especially at large SNR, than previous bounds in a numerical example.