A multi-carrier transmission system using orthogonal carriers with high order QAM constellations for the transmission of a plurality of bits per carrier and symbol. The system uses some method for the determination of an inverse channel model to be used in the equalization process. In the frequency domain, this is normally based on an estimate of the channel attenuation and phase for each carrier. A simplified method of equalization is provided which uses data at the symbol carrier input and output to adaptively estimate an inverse channel model.