This paper proposes a new digital filter adaptation algorithm, suitable for those applications where the required number

of active taps is considerably smaller than the total number

of possible tap positions. The tap positions are selected according to the "scrub taps waiting in a queue (STWQ)" tap selection algorithm, which is proposed in this paper. With this algorithm, the amount of multiplications and additions can be reduced by a factor of

, because the number of operations is proportional to

. The condition

may be satisfied in applications, such as echo canceller, FM multipath distortion canceller (FM-MPDC), etc. The above mentioned applications have been investigated by computer simulation.