A soft-output bidirectional decision feedback equalization technique for TDMA cellular ratio

Issues encountered in the design of reliable narrowband time-division multiple access (TDMA) digital cellular mobile communication systems are considered. In particular, the problem of compensating for the harsh multipath fading environment in systems whose transmission bandwidth is commensurate with the coherence bandwidth of the fading channel is considered. A TDMA channel characterization parameter, the slot-normalized fade rate, is introduced, and an adaptive bidirectional equalization technique, which estimates the location of a deep fade within a time slot, is proposed. The simulation results show that the carrier-to-noise ratio requirement is only 15.5 dB when this equalization technique is used. This is achieved without diversity, and with low complexity. An equivalent equalized land mobile radio channel model and the analytical solution for the optimal bit likelihood calculation for pi /4-shift quadrature differential phase-shift keying (QDPSK) modulation are also derived under certain channel conditions. The results are used as soft decisions for the convolutional decoder.< >