The present invention relates to a method of fractionally spaced adaptive equalization which allows the achievement of the performances of the optimal linear receiver with a high degree of stability of the control algorithms. The technique is applicable to a generic communication system. The present method provides a fractionally spaced equalizer which is perfectly stable and has a good convergence rate without introducing any deterioration of the performances with respect to the optimal receiver and with an extremely low increase in the complexity of realization as compared to the prior art techniques. The invention is based upon the introduction of a whitening filter of the input signal to a fractionally spaced equalizer stabilized with the tap-leakage technique, where the whitening filter is a device able to make the power spectrum density of the signal--repeated with a period equal to the reciprocal of the signalling interval--constant.