104 Wireless Communications

The two general techniques of equalization and diversity are used to improve
radio link performance (i.e. to minimize the bit error rate), but the approach, cost
complexity and effectiveness of each technique varies widely in practical wireless
communication systems or experimentry wireless communication systems.
5.2 FUNDAMENTALS OF EQUALIZATION
It was observed that intersymbol interference (ISI) is a major obstacle to
high speed data transmission over wireless channels. Intersymbol interference
is reputation or esteem by multipath reception within time dispersive channels.
If the modulation bandwidth exceeds the coherence bandwidth of radio channel
then ISI occurs and hence the modulation pulses are spread in time into adjacent
(nearby) symbols. A variety of equalizer (adaptive) can be used to suppress the
interference.
The term equalization can be used to describe any signal processing during
the operation that minimizes ISI.
An equalizer is usually implemented at base band or at IF stage in a receiver
to minimize the interference.
Adaptive equalizer works on two operating modes, that are training and
tracking operating’modes.
A fixed length training sequence is sent by the transmitter so that the
receiver’s equilizer may receive the signal with minimum bit error rate (BER).
This sequence is a pseudo-random binary signal followed by the user data or
information.
Adaptive equilizer at receiver side utilizes a receiver algorithm to compensate
distortion or noise.
The training sequence permits the receivers equalizer to get the proper filter
coefficients in the worst case (i.e. at fades, delays, distortion, noise, error etc.).
At the time user data is received, the adaptive algorithm of the equalizer
tracks the changing channel. Therefore, we can conclude that adaptive equalizer
is continually changing its filter characteristics over time duration.
Fig. 5.1, shows a block diagram of a communication system with an adaptive
equalizer in the receiver and it is simplified communication systems.
If x(t) is the original information signal and f(t) is the combined complex
baseband impulse response of the transmitter, channel and the RF/IF sections
of the receiver, the signal received by the equalizer may be expressed in the
following equation:
y(t) = x(t) ⊗ f*(t) + nb(t) ...(5.1)
where f*(t) denotes the complex conjugate of f (t), nb(t) is the baseband noise at
the input of the equalizer and ⊗ denotes the convolution operation of the system.
If the impulse response of the equalizer is heq(t), then the output of the equalizer will
be as:
d (t) = x(t) ⊗ f*(t) ⊗ 8 > heq(t) + nb(t) ⊗ heq(t) ...(5.2)
= x(t) ⊗ g(t) + nb(t) ⊗ heq(t)
Equalization and Diversity Techniques 105
where g(t) is the combined impulse response of the transmitter, channel, RF/IF
section of the receiver. The complex baseband impulse response of a transversal
filter equalizer is given by the following equation:

Fig. 5.1: Block diagram of a simplified communications system using

an adaptive equalizer at the receiver.

hea(t) = ∑ Cnδ(t − nT ) ...(5.3)

n
where Cn are the complex filter coefficient of the equalizer.
The desired output of the equalizer is x(t), the original source data and
assume that nb(t) = 0 then in order to force d (t) = x(t) in equation (5.2), g(t) must

be equal to f*(t) ⊗ heq(t) and it is given as:

g(t) = f*(t) ⊗ heq(t) = δ(t) ...(5.4)
The goal of equalization is to satisfy equation (5.4) so that the combination
of the transmitter, channel and receiver appear to be an all pass channel.
In the frequency domain equation (5.4) can be expressed as the following
equation:
Heq(f)F*(–f) = 1 ...(5.5)
where Heq(t) and F(f) are Fourier transforms of heq(t) and f(t) respectively.
Equation (5.5) indicates that an equalizer is actually an inverse filter of the
channel or communication link between transmitter and receiver.
If the channel is frequency selective, the equalizer enhances the frequency
components with small amplitudes and attenuates the strong frequencies in
the received frequency spectrum in order to support a flat, composite, received
frequency response and linear phase response.
For a time-varying channel, an adaptive equalizer is designed to track the
channel variations so that equation (5.5) is approximately satisified to track the
channel variations.