A Generalized BCJR Algorithm and Its Use in Iterative Blind Channel Identification

The well-known Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (BCJR) algorithm was generalized to compute joint posterior probabilities of arbitrary sets of symbols given noisy observations of those symbols at the output of an intersymbol interference (ISI) channel. This letter explores using pair-wise joint posterior probabilities produced by generalized BCJR together with expectation maximization for blind identification of the ISI channel impulse response and noise variance. Simulations indicate that the blind algorithm accurately estimates the channel response and noise variance and yields bit error rates comparable to a channel-informed BCJR equalizer.