Iterative design and detection of a DFE in the frequency domain

Error-propagation phenomena and computational complexity of the filters' design are important drawbacks of existing decision-feedback equalizers (DFE) for dispersive channels. In this paper, we propose a new iterative block DFE (IBDFE) which operates iteratively on blocks of the received signal. Indeed, a suitable data-transmission format must be used to allow an efficient implementation of the equalizer in the frequency domain, by means of the discrete Fourier transform. Two design methods are considered. In the first method, hard detected data are used as input of the feedback, and filters are designed according to the correlation between detected and transmitted data. In the second method, the feedback signal is directly designed from soft detection of the equalized signal at the previous iteration. Estimators of the parameters involved in the IBDFE design are also derived. From performance simulations on a wireless dispersive fading channel, we observed that the IBDFE outperforms existing DFEs. Moreover, the IBDFE exhibits a reduction of the computational complexity when compared against existing schemes, both in signal processing and in filter design.