A DSL transmitter and receiver are disclosed that efficiently estimate crosstalk interference. When transmitting over a DSL cable, each of the lines of the cable cause interference in the signals traveling though the other lines in the form of crosstalk. In order to reduce the complexity of the crosstalk estimation calculations, the transmitter sends a measurement signal whose matrix includes a plurality of sub-matrices that include less than all of the signal slots and are modulated with QAM +1s or −1s. Meanwhile, the remaining signal slots are modified with QAM 0 s, which do not require any processing during the crosstalk estimation. Rather than calculating crosstalk vectors of all lines, the receiver need only calculate the crosstalk vectors for the signal slots contained within the sub-matrices, thereby significantly reducing complexity.