A robust noncoherent equalizer receiver for fading channels with short memory . II. Modified structure

For pt. I see ibid., vol.5, no.5, p.1040-54 (2002). In Part I, we introduced a robust noncoherent maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) equalizer receiver structure applicable to radio channels with impulse responses spanning less than two bit intervals. The distinct characteristic of this receiver was its robustness to carrier frequency offsets. However, due to the differential operation prior to the MLSE equalization, we observed some performance degradation, resulting in a delay spread range significantly smaller than an equivalent coherent MLSE equalizer. We propose techniques to significantly improve the performance of the noncoherent equalizer by using a second, complementary differential processor. The performance assessment of the new receiver is presented. In particular, using the Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications system as an example, it is shown that the modified receiver's dispersive channel operation range is almost twice as much as the basic structure, with a multipath diversity gain comparable to a coherent equalizer receiver. On the other hand, unlike coherent structures, it retains low sensitivity to both frequency offsets and modulation index drifts. Finally, we introduce an approach to further extend the receiver's frequency offset tolerance to that of a standard differential detector receiver.     

A robust receiver structure for time-varying, frequency-flat,Rayleigh fading channels

A receiver structure for unknown time-varying, frequency-flat, Rayleigh fading channels is proposed. Unlike the maximum-likelihood receiver structure, this receiver does not need any knowledge of the channel autocovariance or the received signal-to-noise ratio, and yet analytic and simulation results show, that its bit-error rate performance is close to the optimal structure. The receiver is applicable to signals with constant or approximately constant envelopes or to linearly modulated signals using Nyquist pulses     

A noncoherent receiver for interleaved trellis-coded CPFSK signalstransmitted over frequency-flat fading channels

We propose a novel two-stage noncoherent receiver for interleaved trellis-coded CPFSK signals transmitted over time-selective channels. The first stage of the receiver computes reliability information about the transmitted symbols and delivers it to the second stage which operates as a trellis decoder. Simulation results show that the proposed detection strategy outperforms previous noncoherent receivers with a moderate increase in complexity     

Performance analysis of a predetection EGC receiver in exponentially correlated nakagami-m fading channels for noncoherent binary modulations

Average symbol error rate (ASER) of an equal gain combining (EGC) receiver with an arbitrary number of branches in exponentially correlated, Nakagami-m fading channels has been derived for binary, differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) and noncoherent frequency-shift keying (NCFSK) modulations. A Parseval's theorem based approach has been used. Numerical and simulation results have been found to be in close agreement. Results show that for a given ASER, as expected, exponentially correlated fading requires a higher SNR with respect to independent fading. For a given number of branches L, increase in SNR required (SNR penalty) with respect to independent fading is less for higher values of fading parameter m while for a given m, SNR penalty is more for higher L     

Error performance of noncoherent MFSK with L-diversity oncorrelated fading channels

Noncoherent diversity reception of M-ary frequency-shift keying (MFSK) signals becomes increasingly important due to its widespread use in wireless communications. Its error performance analysis, however, is not available in the literature except for the simple case using binary modulation. We address the problem directly based on the decision variables, ending up with closed-form solutions to both conditional and average error probabilities for a general noncoherent MFSK diversity system operating on Rayleigh, Rician, and Nakagami fading channels. The solutions involve some higher order derivatives, and efficient recursive algorithms have been derived for their calculation. The solutions are very general permitting arbitrary diversity order, symbol size, channel parameters, and antenna-array covariance matrix. Numerical examples are also presented for illustration     

A NEW ADAPTIVE EQUALIZER STRUCTURE FOR NONLINEAR CHANNELS

Based on the analysis of nonlinear channel models,a new connectionist model ofadaptive equalizer is constructed.Comparing with the connectionist model using the Volterraseries to extend the input vector space,the number of weights with the new structure is reducedsignificantly.It is shown by simulations that the weight values of the new scheme converge to theoptimal values closely for non-minimum phase channels as well minimum phase channels,if thechannel noise is small enough.Testing results of the BER(Bit Error Rate)tell us that the newadaptive equalizer for nonlinear channels is superior to the conventional linear equalizers in theequalization performances.     

A decorrelating RAKE receiver for CDMA communications overfrequency-selective fading channels

Previous studies showed that multiuser detection in code-division multiple-access (CDMA) communications can be performed without explicit knowledge of users' channel characteristics in a frequency-selective fading environment. However, the computations of these blind approaches are an order of magnitude higher than existing adaptive minimum output energy (MOE) receivers which require at least knowledge of the desired user's channel response. Although the high-complexity problem can be alleviated by constrained adaptive filtering, the tradeoff is a significant drop in receiver performance, especially when the multipath pattern is time varying. In this paper, we present an adaptive receiver for CDMA communications over frequency-selective, and possibly time-varying, wireless channels. A salient feature of the new receiver is that it has complexity and performance comparable to that of the well-known MOE receivers, and yet requires no knowledge of the desired user's channel characteristics     

Specular coherent and noncoherent optimal detection for unresolvedmultipath Ricean fading channels

This paper considers specular coherent and noncoherent optimal detection for unresolved multipath Ricean fading channels with known delays. The focus is on receiver structures and performance. Specular coherent detection employs the carrier phase of the Ricean specular component, while noncoherent detection does not. Therefore, a specular coherent detector must be augmented with a carrier phase estimator for the specular component. The structures considered are generalization of the well-known RAKE receiver to the unresolved multipath case. It is shown that both optimal structures perform a decorrelation operation before combining, which is essential to eliminating error floors under multipath unresolvability conditions. Furthermore, the noncoherent optimal receiver includes an inherent estimator for the specular component phasor. It is shown that the specular coherent and noncoherent structures converge at high SNR. This result is confirmed through analytical and numerical performance evaluation. Little performance gains can be obtained by the use of specular coherent detection for orthogonal frequency-shift keying and to a lesser extent for differential phase-shift keying over mixed mode Ricean/Rayleigh fading channels, making noncoherent demodulation attractive in these cases     

An efficient low complexity cluster-based MLSE equalizer for frequency-selective fading channels

Recently, a novel MLSE equalizer was reported, that does not require the explicit estimation of the channel impulse response. Instead, it utilizes, in an efficient manner, the estimates of the centers of the clusters formed by the received observations. In this paper, a novel cluster tracking scheme is presented, which extends the application of this equalizer in time-varying transmission environments. The proposed algorithm is shown to be equivalent in tracking performance with the classic LMS-based MLSE equalizer, yet much simpler computationally. This is a consequence of the fact that the new method allows for an efficient exploitation of the symmetries underlying the signaling scheme.     

The fading number of single-input multiple-output fading channels with memory

We derive the fading number of stationary and ergodic (not necessarily Gaussian) single-input multiple-output (SIMO) fading channels with memory. This is the second term, after the double-logarithmic term, of the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) expansion of channel capacity. The transmitter and receiver are assumed to be cognizant of the probability law governing the fading but not of its realization. It is demonstrated that the fading number is achieved by independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) circularly symmetric inputs of squared magnitude whose logarithm is uniformly distributed over an SNR-dependent interval. The upper limit of the interval is the logarithm of the allowed transmit power, and the lower limit tends to infinity sublogarithmically in the SNR. The converse relies inter alia on a new observation regarding input distributions that escape to infinity. Lower and upper bounds on the fading number for Gaussian fading are also presented. These are related to the mean squared-errors of the one-step predictor and the one-gap interpolator of the fading process respectively. The bounds are computed explicitly for stationary mth-order autoregressive AR(m) Gaussian fading processes.     

On antenna array receiver principles for space-time-selectiveRayleigh fading channels

Optimum (in the sense of minimum-error probability) single-symbol diversity detection for fading, noisy channels is too complex for practical implementation. A simplified, near-optimum array receiver is proposed, which is based on the statistics (i.e., the covariance-function matrix) of the fading channel. This detector is then analyzed by calculating the exact error probability. When there is a spread of the direction of arrival of the incident radio waves, the proposed detector significantly gains over an adaptive antenna array (which forms a weighted sum of the received antenna signals). Also, for this adaptive array, a fundamental difference between maximum-likelihood weights and least-mean-square weights is observed     

A robust channel estimator for DS-CDMA systems under multipath fading channels

This paper addresses the problem of channel estimation for direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems with time-varying multipath fading channels. The multipath fading channels are modeled as autoregressive (AR) models. A method is first proposed to convert the time-varying regression model due to the time-varying nature of users' information symbols into a time-invariant one. Then, a polynomial approach is proposed to obtain the minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimator. The uncertainty of the channel model and decision errors of the DS-CDMA detector are taken into consideration in the design of the MMSE estimator. Compared with the Kalman estimator, the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is much lower. The simulation results show that the proposed estimator provides a comparable estimation performance with the Kalman estimator and is robust for fast-fading channels.     

A constrained MMSE receiver for DS/CDMA systems in fading channels

The convergence problem of minimum mean square-error (MMSE) receivers is discussed, and to overcome the problem, a constrained MMSE receiver is proposed. In addition, we propose the orthogonal decomposition-based least mean square algorithm to implement the constrained MMSE receiver adaptively. Through computer simulations, it is shown that the proposed receiver provides significant performance improvement in the bit-error rate over the conventional matched filter receiver and currently available MMSE receivers.     

A sequential Monte Carlo blind receiver for OFDM systems infrequency-selective fading channels

We consider the application of the sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methodology to the problem of blind symbol detection in a wireless orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system over a frequency-selective fading channel. Bayesian inference of the unknown data symbols in the presence of an unknown multipath fading channel is made only from the observations over one OFDM symbol duration. A novel blind SMC detector built on the techniques of importance sampling and resampling is developed for differentially encoded OFDM systems. The performance of different schemes of delayed-weight estimation methods is studied. Furthermore, being soft-input and soft-output in nature, the proposed SMC detector is employed as the first-stage demodulator in a turbo receiver for a coded OFDM system. Such a turbo receiver successively improves the receiver performance by iteratively exchanging the so-called extrinsic information with the maximum a posteriori (MAP) outer channel decoder. Finally, the performance of the proposed sequential Monte Carlo receiver is demonstrated through computer simulations     

A Reed-Solomon coded DS-CDMA system using noncoherent M-aryorthogonal modulation over multipath fading channels

The performance of Reed-Solomon (RS) coded direct-sequence code division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems using noncoherent M-ary orthogonal modulation is investigated over multipath Rayleigh fading channels. Diversity reception techniques with equal gain combining (EGC) or selection combining (SC) are invoked and the related performance is evaluated for both uncoded and coded DS-CDMA systems. “Errors-and-erasures” decoding is considered, where the erasures are based on Viterbi's (1982) so-called ratio threshold test (RTT). The probability density functions (PDF) of the ratio associated with the RTT conditioned on both the correct detection and erroneous detection of the M-ary signals are derived. These PDFs are then used for computing the codeword decoding error probability of the RS coded DS-CDMA system using “errors-and-erasures” decoding. Furthermore, the performance of the “errors-and-erasures” decoding technique employing the RTT is compared to that of “error-correction-only” decoding refraining from using side-information over multipath Rayleigh fading channels. As expected, the numerical results show that when using “errors-and-erasures” decoding, RS codes of a given code rate can achieve a higher coding gain than without erasure information     

Soft input soft output Kalman equalizer for MIMO frequency selective fading channels

We consider the Kalman filter for equalization of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), frequency selective, quasi-static fading channel. More specifically, we consider a coded system, where the incoming bit stream is convolutionally encoded, interleaved and then spatially multiplexed across the transmit antennas. Each substream is modulated into M-ary symbols before being transmitted over a frequency selective channel. At the receiver, we propose to use the Kalman filter as a low complexity MIMO equalizer, as opposed to the trellis based maximum a-posteriori (MAP) equalizer whose computational complexity grows exponentially with the channel memory, the number of transmit antennas and the spectral efficiency (bits/s/Hz) of the system. We modify the structure of the Kalman filter and enable it to process the a-priori (soft) information provided by the channel decoder, thereby allowing us to perform iterative (turbo) equalization on the received sequence. The iterative equalizer structure is designed for general M-ary constellations. We also propose a low complexity version of the above algorithm whose performance is comparable to its full complexity counterpart, but which achieves a significant complexity reduction. We demonstrate via simulations that for higher order constellations, when sufficient number of receive antennas are available (e.g. for a 2 transmitter, 3 receiver system, QPSK), the performance of the proposed algorithms after 4 iterations is within 1.5 dB of the non-iterative MAP algorithm with close to an order of magnitude complexity reduction. By objectively quantifying the complexity of all the considered algorithms we show that the complexity reduction for the proposed schemes becomes increasingly significant for practical systems with moderate to large constellation sizes and a large number of transmit antennas     

A robust adaptive DFE receiver for DS-CDMA systems under multipathfading channels

This paper presents a novel receiver design from signal processing viewpoint for direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems under multipath fading channels. A robust adaptive decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) is developed by using optimal filtering technique via minimizing the mean-square error (MSE). The multipath fading channels are modeled as tapped-delay-line filters, and the tap coefficients are described as Rayleigh distributions in order to imitate the frequency-selective fading channel. Then, a robust Kalman filtering algorithm is used to estimate the channel responses for the adaptation of the proposed DFE receiver under the situation of partially known channel statistics. The feedforward and feedback filters are designed by using not only the estimated channel responses but the uncertainties and error covariance of channel estimation as well. As shown in the computer simulations, the proposed adaptive DFE receiver is robust against the estimation errors and modeling dynamics of the channels. Hence, it is very suitable for receiver design in data transmissions through multipath fading channels encountered in most wireless communication systems     

On receiver structures for channels having memory

This paper is concerned withm-ary communication channels(m geq 2)having intersymbol interference betweenLtime periods(L geq 2). Receiver structures are developed for making jointly optimum (minimum probability of error) decisions aboutLconsecutive symbols on the basis of the complete message received. The decision statistics are computed by a sequential procedure, and the number of computations increases only linearly with the message length. The method can be applied to the general problem of making decisions about the states of a discrete-state Markov information source which is observable only through a channel with additive Gaussian or non-Gaussian noise.     

Performance analysis of DS/CDMA with noncoherent M-ary orthogonalmodulation in multipath fading channels

The performance of a DS/CDMA system using M-ary orthogonal modulation with noncoherent demodulation is evaluated. The system operates in a multipath fading channel. A RAKE receiver structure with equal gain combining is used for demodulation. An approximation to the bit error probability is given which depends only on the first- and second-order moments of the multipath energies. The analysis results are compared with the results from computer simulations. It is seen that the approximation is accurate for multipath energies with realistic coefficient of variation. The system performance is also evaluated in terms of the capacity, which is defined as the number of users that can be supported at a given bit error probability. The approximation is used to evaluate the capacity reductions due to power variations caused by multipath fading     

CRBs and MLEs for SNR estimation of noncoherent BFSK signals in Rayleigh fading channels

Crame/spl acute/r-Rao bound expressions are derived for data and non-data-aided SNR estimation of noncoherent BFSK signals in flat Rayleigh fading channels, and maximum-likelihood estimators for the data-aided and the non-data-aided cases are provided. The performance of the estimators is verified by simulation.