Fast maximum likelihood for blind identification of multiple FIR channels

This paper develops a fast maximum likelihood method for estimating the impulse responses of multiple FIR channels driven by an arbitrary unknown input. The resulting method consists of two iterative steps, where each step minimizes a quadratic function. The two-step maximum likelihood (TSML) method is shown to be high-SNR efficient, i.e., attaining the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRB) at high SNR. The TSML method exploits a novel orthogonal complement matrix of the generalized Sylvester matrix. Simulations show that the TSML, method significantly outperforms the cross-relation (CR) method and the subspace (SS) method and attains the CRB over a wide range of SNR. This paper also studies a Fisher information (FI) matrix to reveal the identifiability of the M-channel system. A strong connection between the FI-based identifiability and the CR-based identifiability is established.