Blind Fractionally Spaced Equalization and Timing Synchronization in Wireless Fading Channels

Abstract

The development of low-complexity blind techniques for equalization and timing synchronization is of enormous importance in the design of wireless communication systems. In this paper, we propose a practical solution for blind equalization and timing recovery in fast-fading time and frequency selective wireless communication channels. We develop a general framework for Constant Modulus Algorithm (CMA) based joint Fractionally Spaced Equalization (FSE) and timing recovery. We use differential modulation to deal with any arbitrary carrier offset. We propose a data reuse strategy to achieve improved short burst wireless communication in CMA based equalization systems. Our results show that FSE outperforms T-Spaced Equalization (TSE) with approximately 2 times faster Mean Square Error (MSE) convergence and approximately 2 dB gain in Bit Error Rate (BER) performance in wireless fading channels. In addition, we demonstrate that the BER performance of the proposed FSE receiver meets the theoretical bounds with only a few dB loss in Stanford University Interim (SUI) channels, which are relevant to IEEE 802.16.3c standard for Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks.