Reduced complexity sequence detection

The paper deals with the design of suboptimal receivers for data transmission over frequency selective channels. The complexity of the optimum detector, that is the maximum likelihood sequence detector (MLSD), turns out be exponential in the channel memory. Hence, when dealing with channels with long memory, suboptimal receiver structures must be considered. Among suboptimal methods, a technique that allows reduction of the complexity is the delayed decision feedback sequence detector (DDFSD). This receiver is based on a Viterbi processor where the channel memory is truncated. The memory truncation is compensated by a per-survivor decision feedback equalizer. In order to achieve good performance, it is crucial to operate an appropriate prefiltering of the received sequence before the DDFSD. Our contribution is to extend the principles of MLSD and DDFSD to the case where the prefilter is the feedforward filter of a minimum mean-square error decision feedback equalizer (MMSE-DFE). Moreover performance evaluation of the MMSE prefiltered DDFSD is addressed. The union upper bound is used to evaluate the probability of first-event error. Simulation results show that our proposed design of the MMSE-DDFSD gives substantial benefits when a severe frequency selective channel is considered