Soft-Decision-Driven Channel Estimation for Pipelined Turbo Receivers

We consider channel estimation specific to turbo equalization for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication. We develop a soft-decision-driven sequential algorithm geared to the pipelined turbo equalizer architecture operating on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols. One interesting feature of the pipelined turbo equalizer is that multiple soft-decisions become available at various processing stages. A tricky issue is that these multiple decisions from different pipeline stages have varying levels of reliability. This paper establishes an effective strategy for the channel estimator to track the target channel, while dealing with observation sets with different qualities. The resulting algorithm is basically a linear sequential estimation algorithm and, as such, is Kalman-based in nature. The main difference here, however, is that the proposed algorithm employs puncturing on observation samples to effectively deal with the inherent correlation among the multiple demapper/decoder module outputs that cannot easily be removed by the traditional innovations approach. The proposed algorithm continuously monitors the quality of the feedback decisions and incorporates it in the channel estimation process. The proposed channel estimation scheme shows clear performance advantages relative to existing channel estimation techniques.Comment: 11 pages; IEEE Transactions on Communications 201

Adaptive equalisation for fading digital communication channels

This thesis considers the design of new adaptive equalisers for fading digital communication channels. The role of equalisation is discussed in the context of the functions of a digital radio communication system and both conventional and more recent novel equaliser designs are described. The application of recurrent neural networks to the problem of equalisation is developed from a theoretical study of a single node structure to the design of multinode structures. These neural networks are shown to cancel intersymbol interference in a manner mimicking conventional techniques and simulations demonstrate their sensitivity to symbol estimation errors. In addition the error mechanisms of conventional maximum likelihood equalisers operating on rapidly time-varying channels are investigated and highlight the problems of channel estimation using delayed and often incorrect symbol estimates. The relative sensitivity of Bayesian equalisation techniques to errors in the channel estimate is studied and demonstrates that the structure's equalisation capability is also susceptible to such errors. Applications of multiple channel estimator methods are developed, leading to reduced complexity structures which trade performance for a smaller computational load. These novel structures are shown to provide an improvement over the conventional techniques, especially for rapidly time-varying channels, by reducing the time delay in the channel estimation process. Finally, the use of confidence measures of the equaliser's symbol estimates in order to improve channel estimation is studied and isolates the critical areas in the development of the technique — the production of reliable confidence measures by the equalisers and the statistics of symbol estimation error bursts

Novel multiuser detection and multi-rate schemes for multi-carrier CDMA

A large variety of services is [sic] expected for wireless systems, in particular, high data rate services, such as wireless Internet access. Users with different data rates and quality of service (QoS) requirements must be accommodated. A suitable multiple access scheme is key to enabling wireless systems to support both the high data rate and the integrated multiple data rate transmissions with satisfactory performance and flexibility. A multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) scheme is a promising candidate for emerging broadband wireless systems. MC-CDMA is a hybrid of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and code division multiple access (CDMA). The most salient feature of MC-CDMA is that the rate of transmission is not limited by the wireless channel\u27s frequency-selective fading effects caused by multipath propagation. In MC-CDMA, each chip of the desired user\u27s spreading code, multiplied by the current data bit, is modulated onto a separate subcarrier. Therefore, each subcarrier has a narrow bandwidth and undergoes frequency-flat fading. Two important issues for an MC-CDMA wireless system, multiuser detection and multi-rate access, are discussed in this dissertation. Several advanced receiver structures capable of suppressing multiuser interference in an uplink MC-CDMA system, operating in a frequency-selective fading channel, are studied in this dissertation. One receiver is based on a so-called multishot structure, in which the interference introduced by the asynchronous reception of different users is successfully suppressed by a receiver based on the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) criterion with a built-in de-biasing feature. Like many other multiuser schemes, this receiver is very sensitive to a delay estimation error. A blind adaptive two-stage decorrelating receiver based on the bootstrap algorithm is developed to combat severe performance degradation due to a delay estimation error. It is observed that in the presence of a delay estimation error the blind adaptive bootstrap receiver is more near-far resistant than the MMSE receiver. Furthermore, a differential bootstrap receiver is proposed to extend the limited operating range of the two-stage bootstrap receiver which suffers from a phase ambiguity problem. Another receiver is based on a partial sampling (PS) demodulation structure, which further reduces the sensitivity to unknown user delays in an uplink scenario. Using this partial sampling structure, it is no longer necessary to synchronize the receiver with the desired user. Following the partial sampling demodulator, a minimum mean-square error combining (MMSEC) detector is applied. The partial sampling MMSEC (PS-MMSEC) receiver is shown to have strong interference suppression and timing acquisition capabilities. The complexity of this receiver can be reduced significantly, with negligible performance loss, by choosing a suitable partial sampling rate and using a structure called reduced complexity PS-MMSEC (RPS-MMSEC). The adaptive implementation of these receivers yields a superior rate of convergence and symbol error rate performance in comparison to a conventional MMSEC receiver with known timing. All the above receiver structures are for a single-rate MC-CDMA. Three novel multi-rate access schemes for multi-rate MC-CDMA, fixed spreading length (FSL), coded FSL (CFSL) and variable spreading length (VSL), have been developed. These multi-rate access schemes enable users to transmit information at different data rates in one MC-CDMA system. Hence, voice, data, image and video can be transmitted seamlessly through a wireless infrastructure. The bit error rate performance of these schemes is investigated for both low-rate and high-rate users