It is shown that a large class of communication systems which admit a
sum-product algorithm (SPA) based receiver also admit a corresponding
linear-programming (LP) based receiver. The two receivers have a relationship
defined by the local structure of the underlying graphical model, and are
inhibited by the same phenomenon, which we call 'pseudoconfigurations'. This
concept is a generalization of the concept of 'pseudocodewords' for linear
codes. It is proved that the LP receiver has the 'maximum likelihood
certificate' property, and that the receiver output is the lowest cost
pseudoconfiguration. Equivalence of graph-cover pseudoconfigurations and
linear-programming pseudoconfigurations is also proved. A concept of 'system
pseudodistance' is defined which generalizes the existing concept of
pseudodistance for binary and nonbinary linear codes. It is demonstrated how
the LP design technique may be applied to the problem of joint equalization and
decoding of coded transmissions over a frequency selective channel, and a
simulation-based analysis of the error events of the resulting LP receiver is
also provided. For this particular application, the proposed LP receiver is
shown to be competitive with other receivers, and to be capable of
outperforming turbo equalization in bit and frame error rate performance.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. To appear in the IEEE Transactions on
Communication