NSJ17003

Advanced Digital Communication

Communication
Through Bandlimited
Channel
Chapter 3
InterSymbol Interference
Frequency Selective (Slow and fast fading)
Intersymbol Interference (ISI)

◦ During transmission of signal, it was noticed that received signals tended to get elongated and smeared into each other.
 Intersymbol Interference
◦ If the rectangular multilevel pulses are
filtered improperly as they pass
through a communications system,
they will spread in time, and the pulse
for each symbol may be smeared into
adjacent time slots and cause
Intersymbol Interference.

◦ Due to effect of system filtering, the

received pulses can overlap one
another.

◦ Tail of pulse can smear into adjacent

symbol intervals, and degrading the
error performance - Intersymbol
interference (ISI).
Bandwidth Efficiency
◦ Nyquist showed that the theoretical minimum system bandwidth needed in order to detect
Rs symbols/s, without ISI is (Rs/2) symbol/s/Hertz
◦ Bandwidth efficiency for M-ary PSK signal:
◦ How much date rate can be supported by the system with each unit frequency band?
◦ The higher bandwidth efficiency, the better the system is.

Bandwidth Efficiency = (log2 M)/2

bit rate R
Bandwidth Efficiency = = b bits/sec/Hz
Signal bandwdith W
Example 1
◦ Theoretical maximum symbol rate packing without ISI is Rs = 2 symbols/s/Hz. For a given
symbol set size of M =64, calculate what is the maximum bandwidth efficiecncy without ISI?
 Eye Pattern
◦ Is the display that results from measuring a system’s
response to baseband signals.
◦ The optimum sampling time corresponds to the
maximum eye opening, yielding the greatest protection
against noise.
◦ Qualitatively assessing the extent of the ISI.
◦ As the eye closes, ISI is increasing; as the eye opens, ISI
is decreasing.
◦ The amount of ISI can be seen on an oscilloscope using
an Eye Diagram or Eye pattern.
◦ ISI measured by eye pattern
◦ DA is a measure of distortion caused by ISI.
◦ MN is a measure of noise margin.
◦ JT is a measure of the timing jitter.
◦ ST is a measure of the sensitivity-to-timing error.
Examples of Eye Diagram
 Raised-Cosine Filter
◦ Pulse Shaping to reduce ISI
◦ Pulse that spread in time will degrade the system’s error
performance due to increase ISI.
◦ Reduce the required system bandwidth.
◦ Compress the bandwidth of the data impulse to some
reasonably small bandwidth greater than the Nyquist minimum
– pulse shaping with Nyquist filter:
◦ The most popular of Nyquist filter is raised-cosine filter.
◦ Zero ISI is only when the sampling is performed at exactly
the correct sampling time when the tails of pulses are large.
◦ Transfer function response of raised-cosine filter with various
roll-off factors.
◦ Impulse response of raised-cosine filter with various roll-of
factors.
◦ Comprise main lobe and sidelobes called pre- and post-lobe
tails that are infinitely long.
Raised-Cosine Filter

◦ One frequently used H(f) transfer function belonging to the Nyquist class (zero ISI at the sampling
time).
◦ The roll-off factor is defined to be r = (W-W0 )/W0 , where 0 < r < 1. W = absolute bandwidth, W0 =
minimum Nyquist bandwidth.
◦ Minimum required bandwidth

◦ DSB Bandwidth, Rs = symbol rate

Example 2
◦ Find the minimum required bandwidth for the baseband transmission of a four-level PAM
pulse sequence having a data rate of R = 2400 bits/s if r = 1.
Equalizers
 Equalizers
◦ An equalizer is a digital filter that is used to mitigate the effects of
intersymbol interference that is introduced by the channel. Equalization
can be done using
◦ MLSE (Maximum-Likelihood Sequence Estimation)
◦ Filtering
◦ Linear Transversal filter
◦ Decision Feedback filter
◦ Adaptive equalizer
 Linear Transversal Filter
◦ Considerable research has been performed on the
criterion for optimizing the filter coefficients

◦ The most meaningful measure of performance for a

digital communication system is the average probability
of error, it is desirable to choose the coefficients to
minimize this performance index.

◦ There are two criteria have been used in optimizing the

equalizer coefficients. Those are

◦ Zero forcing equalizer

◦ Mean Square error criteria.

Linear Transversal Filter
◦ Zero-forcing equalizer:
◦ The filter
◦ taps are adjusted such that the equalizer output is forced to be zero at N sample points on each side:

◦ Mean Square Error (MSE) equalizer:

◦ The filter taps are adjusted such that the MSE of ISI and noise power at the equalizer output is minimized.
 Decision Feedback Equalizer
◦ Decision Feedback Equalization makes use of previous
decisions in attempting to estimate the current symbol.
◦ Any trailing intersymbol interference caused by previous
symbols is reconstructed and then subtracted. The DFE is
inherently a nonlinear receiver.
◦ However, it can be analyzed using linear techniques, if one
assumes all previous decisions are correct.
◦ The feedback filter accepts as input the decision from the
previous symbol period; thus, the name decision feedback.
◦ The feedforward filter will try to shape the channel output
signal so that it is a causal signal.
◦ The feedback section will then subtract (without noise
enhancement) any trailing ISI.
◦ This principle of detecting symbols and using feedback to
remove the ISI they cause (before detecting the next symbol),
is called decision feedback equalization (DFE).
 Decision Feedback Equalizer
◦ A DFE is a nonlinear equalizer that employs previous
decisions to eliminate the ISI caused by previously detected
symbols on the current symbol to be detected.

◦ The Decision Feedback Equalizer (DFE) depicted in Figure ,

consists of two lters, a feedforward filter and feedback filter.

◦ The input to the feedforward filter is received signal sequence

vk . The feedback filter has as its input the sequence of
decisions on previously detected symbols.

◦ The feedback filter is used to remove that part of the ISI from
the present estimate caused by previously detected symbols.
Maximum Likelihood Sequence
Estimation (MLSE) equalizer
◦ The MSE-based linear equalizers are optimum with respect to the criterion of minimum probability of symbol error when
the channel does not introduce any amplitude distortion. Yet this is precisely the condition in which an equalizer is needed
for a mobile communications link.

◦ MLSE uses various forms of the classical maximum likelihood receiver structure.

◦ the MLSE tests all possible data sequences(rather than decoding each received symbol by itself), and chooses the data
sequence with the maximum probabilityas the output. A channel impulse response simulator is used within the algorithm,

◦ Drawback: An MLSE usually has a large computational requirement especially when the delay spread of the channel is large
 Maximum Likelihood Sequence
Estimation (MLSE) equalizer
◦ The MLSE can be viewed as a problem in estimating the state of a discrete time
finite state machine The channel has MLstates, where M is the size of the symbol
alphabet of the modulation.

◦ An MLtrellisis used by the receiver to model the channel over time. The Viterbi
algorithm then tracks the state of the channel by the paths through the trellis.

◦ The MLSE is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the probability of a sequence
error.

NOTES:

◦ The MLSE requires knowledge of the channel characteristics in order to compute

the metrics for making decisions.

◦ The MLSE also requires knowledge of the statistical distribution of the

noisecorrupting the signal the probability distribution of the noise determines the
form of the metric for optimum demodulation of the received signal.

◦ The matched filter operates on the continuous time signal, whereas the MLSE and
channel estimator rely on discretized (nonlinear) samples.