Design and implementation of M-BCJR algorithm based turbo equalizer

Abstract

Turbo equalizers have been shown to be successful in mitigating the effects of inter-symbol interference introduced by partial response modems and by dispersive channels for code rates of R >1/2. We analyze the performance of iterative equalization and decoding (IED) using an M-BCJR equalizer. We use bit error rate (BER), frame error rate simulations and extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts to study and compare the performances of M-BCJR and BCJR equalizers on precoded and non-precoded channels. Using EXIT charts, the achievable channel capacities with IED using the BCJR, M-BCJR and MMSE LE equalizers are also compared. We predict the BER performance of IED using the M-BCJR equalizer from EXIT charts and explain the discrepancy between the observed and predicted performances by showing that the extrinsic outputs of the M-BCJR algorithm are not true logarithmiclikelihood ratios (LLR's). We show that the true LLR's can be estimated if the conditional distributions of the extrinsic outputs are known and finally we design a practical estimator for computing the true LLR's from the extrinsic outputs of the M-BCJR equalizer. � 2004 IEEE.