A new architecture for maximum likelihood sequence detec- tion (MLSD) in nonlinear dispersive channels (NLCs) is presented, and its robustness to inaccurate channel knowledge is analyzed. This architecture is developed by considering a novel orthogonal representation of the NLC, which is exploited to develop a front-end capable of obtaining uncorrelated symbol rate samples, representing a sufficient statistic for information decoding. This front-end is a special form of space-time whitened matched filter (ST-WMF), and the MLSD obtained by using this front-end (ST-WMF-MLSD) requires simple branch metrics due to the signal whitening. The ST-WMF also allows for space-time compression of the equivalent channel, which is exploited for further complexity reduction of the ST-WMF-MLSD. Simulation results show the good trade-off in performance and complexity obtained with the ST-WMF- MLSD, even in the presence of inaccurate channel knowledge.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO
