A mean field annealing partially-connected neural equalizer for pan-European GSM system

Channel equalization is essential in the pan-European GSM mobile communication system. The maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) using the Viterbi algorithm (VA) is commonly recommended for the equalization which can only accommodate the channels with limited time delay spread. This paper presents a partially connected neural equalizer for the GSM system, in which the complexity is linearly proportional to the time delay spread. For the purpose of effectively eliminating the performance degradation due to existence of local minima, the mean-field-annealing (MFA) technique is introduced. The present approach is well suited for digital or analog VLSI implementations and can converge in a very short time period. Computer simulations show that our approach can provide performance improvement over 16-state and 32-state VAs which are usually suggested for practical applications.