Whitened matched filtering versus channel shortening for ST-BICM over MIMO ISI channel

We investigate two different prefiltering strategies, i.e., channel shortening and whitened matched filtering, to decode an ST-BICM over MIMO ISI channels using a trellis based post-detector. While those two approaches have been exhaustively visited in the past, their fair comparison in terms of trade off between complexity and performance was to the authors' knowledge never tackled. This paper aims at giving some valuable insights about the respective benefits of these two prefiltering methods with respect to the channel characteristics and overall receiver complexity.