US Patent 7502336 Multi-carrier communication using adaptive tone-pruning

An apparatus, system, and method are described for multi-carrier communication using adaptive tone-pruning. The method may include transmitting a data-bearing signal over a plurality of tones on a communication loop within a plurality of communication loops and calculating a minimum tone cost according to a tone cost algorithm. The tone cost algorithm defines a tone cost associated with a selected tone within the plurality of tones. The tone cost of the selected tone is based on a predefined loading frequency and a signal-to-noise ration (SNR) of the selected tone. The method also may include determining a bit loading pattern for the data-bearing signal according to the minimum tone cost. This determination may occur in response to a determination that a minimum allowable transmission power is greater than a minimum required transmission power for the data-bearing signal.