Equalization Techniques for Multicarrier Modulation

Mr. Guner Arslan
UT Austin

Wednesday, August 11th, 3:30 PM, ENS 602

arslan@ece.utexas.edu


Abstract

The development of the Internet and multimedia applications has created a demand for high-speed communication which requires broadband channels. Inter-symbol interference (ISI) is a major problem with these channels. This undesired effect is caused by spectral shaping of a channel. Two approaches to combat ISI are full channel equalization and multi-carrier modulation (MCM) which is currently one of the most promising techniques for high-speed digital communications. It has been standardized for asymmetric digital subscriber lines (ADSL) and digital audio/video broadcasting. With MCM, the problem of fully equalizing a channel is converted into partitioning the channel into small subchannels. However, this does not imply that equalization is not required in an MCM system. A guard period longer than the channel impulse response is required to separate subchannels at the receiver. Performance loss due to this guard period can be reduced with an equalizer which shortens the channel. Starting with background information for multicarrier modulation, the definition of the channel shortening problem is given. We present existing solutions and their drawbacks before we derive a new objective function. This objective function maximizes the geometric signal-to-noise ratio which is currently one of the most popular performance measures in MCM equalizers. New optimality criteria are discussed to overcome the drawbacks of existing ones.


A list of Telecommunications and Signal Processing Seminars is available at from the ECE department Web pages under "Seminars". The Web address for the Telecommunications and Signal Processing Seminars is http://anchovy.ece.utexas.edu/seminars