A combined LMS-SOM algorithm for time-varying non-linear channel equalization

The paper proposes a self-organizing map (SOM) approach to equalize time-varying non-linear channels. The approach is applied to a satellite mobile communication channel which is composed of time invariant linear filters, a non-linear memoryless amplifier and a time-varying multi-path propagation channel. The SOM is combined to a Transversal Linear Equalizer (TLE) which is trained by the LMS algorithm. The paper studies the performance and convergence behavior of the SOM. The paper also illustrates the capability of the SOM to track the channel changes in particular for complicated modulation schemes.