Combined equalization, decoding and antenna diversity combining for mobile/personal digital radio transmission using feedforward synchronization

A digital radio transceiver concept employing interleaved trellis coded modulation and optional slow frequency hopping is presented. The receiver concept comprising combined equalization and decoding is extended to incorporate antenna diversity combining, as well as near-optimal receiver synchronization based on purely feedforward channel estimation. The resulting fully coherent and robust receiver has a low computational complexity. The average bit error performance of the novel transceiver operating over flat and selective Rayleigh fading channels is assessed via simulation. Emphasis is placed on the benefits of antenna diversity in combating the bit error rate (BER) degradation resulting from insufficient interleaving.