A new suboptimum viterbi receiver structure for digital communication systems
Wolfgang Behm, Norbert J. Fliege · European Transactions on Telecommunications · 1995
Abstract Minimization of the average symbol error probability is the central aim when designing a receiver structure of a digital communication system. It is well known that the maximum‐likelihood (ML) decision rule yields the best solution in this sense. In practical applications, the ML sequence estimation is realized by the computationally efficient Viterbi algorithm. As a drawback, however, the computational complexity of this algorithm depends exponentially on the length of the channel impulse response. In this paper, a new suboptimum receiver structure is presented containing a linear recursive equalizer for channel memory truncation and a Viterbi detector. The criterion for adjusting the equalizer and the remaining impulse response for the Viterbi detector is derived from the zeros of the channel transfer function. The proposed concept takes control of both the noise enhancement by the equalizer and the computational complexity of the Viterbi algorithm.