A new MSE approach for combined linear-Viterbi equalizers

Combined linear-Viterbi equalization (CLVE) is a technique that employs a linear pre-filter in conjunction with the Viterbi algorithm (VA) to mitigate the effects of intersymbol interference. The aim of the linear pre-filter is to shape the original channel impulse response to some shorter desired impulse response (DIR) in order to reduce the complexity of the VA. In this paper, we present a new MSE based approach for optimizing CLVEs. This approach takes advantage of the modifications to the VA which are suitable for channels having coarsely located coefficients. Specifically, the new approach has the flexibility in choosing the positions and optimizing the values of nonzero coefficients of DIR. As a result, it includes the conventional MSE-based approaches as a special case. Simulation results have been presented to illustrate the performance of proposed method.