Path diversity reception using SMI steering vector arrays and multi-trellis Viterbi equalizer

In this paper, path diversity reception using sample matrix inversion (SMI) steering vector arrays and a multi-trellis Viterbi equalizer is proposed to cope with frequency-selective fading. The proposed scheme estimates the channel impulse response and selects the delayed path that provides maximum path power. It then calculates two sets of array weight and output response vectors to extract the direct and selected paths and to estimate the array output response with the single constraint SMI algorithm. The branch-metric-combining multi-trellis Viterbi algorithm is used to estimate the most likely transmitted sequence from the array output signals. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is superior to the previously proposed scheme in frequency-selective fading channels.