Conditional ML and MAP techniques for error propagation suppression in multi-path DFE detectors

Simple and effective error propagation (EP) suppression techniques were reported earlier for decision feedback equalization (DFE) detectors. However, these techniques are not well suited for multi-path DFE detectors because EP suppression and path selection mechanisms interfere with each other. In this paper, we propose novel techniques for improving the EP performance of multi-path DFE schemes, in particular, the (1, 7) coded M3DFE (advanced multi-level DFE). The effectiveness of the proposed techniques is quantified by evaluating the sector failure rate (SFR) improvement. Simulation and calculation results show that after applying the proposed EP suppression techniques, M3DFE achieves almost the same SFR as that caused by random errors.