Error Performance of a Channel of Known Impulse Response

Abstract

It has long been known that the performance of a channel with intersymbol interference (ISI) not only depends on the signal to noise ratio, but on the actual impulse response coefficients as well. In this paper, a technique for approximating the performance of a communications channel in the presence of ISI is presented. It is assumed that the finite length impulse response of the channel is known, and that a maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) technique is used for equalisation. The technique consists of identifying for the modulation and impulse response duration, those few error events which are most likely to occur. This selection process is computationally intensive, but once it has been performed for a given modulation, the results can be used to enable very efficient approximation. Results are presented for some common modulation schemes. Show more