EE4601

Communication Systems
Week 13
Linear Zero Forcing Equalization
0
c 2012, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect13 1)

Equalization
The cascade of the transmit lter g(t), channel c(t), receiver lter h(t) yields
the overall pulse
p(t) = g(t) c(t) h(t)
The signal at the output of the matched lter is
y(t) =

k
a
k
p(t kT) + n(t)
and the sampled output is
y
n
= y(nT) =

k
a
k
p
nk
+ n
n
=

k
p
k
a
nk
+ n
n
Assume a causal, nite-length, channel such that p(t) = 0 for t < 0 and
t > LT.
The discrete-time channel p
n
= p(nT), can be represented by the vector
p = (p
0
, p
1
, . . . , p
L
)
0
c 2010, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect8 2)

Equalization
An equalizer is a digital lter that is used to mitigate the eects of inter-
symbol interference that is introduced by a time dispersive channel.
The tap co-ecients of the equalizer are denoted by the vector
w = (w
0
, w
1
, , w
N1
)
T
where N is the number of equalizer taps.
If the equalizer is used to process the sampled outputs of the receiver
matched lter, then the output of the equalizer is
x
n
=
N1

j=0
w
j
y
nj
0
c 2010, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect8 3)

Linear Transversal Equalizer

0
w
1
w
^
n x
n x
~

n
T T T T
w
N
w
N -2 -1
n
y
0
c 2010, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect8 4)

Overall Discrete-time Model

The overall channel and equalizer can be represented by a overall digital
lter with impulse response
q = (q
0
, q
1
, . . . , q
N+L1
)
T
where
q
n
=
N1

j=0
w
j
p
nj
= w
T
p(n)
with
p(n) = (p
n
, p
n1
, p
n2
, . . . , p
nN+1
)
T
and p
i
= 0, i < 0, i > L. That is, q is the discrete convolution of p and w.
0
c 2010, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect8 5)

Perfect Equalization
Let the component of p of greatest magnitude be denoted by p
d
1
. Note that
we may have d
1
= 0.
Let the number of equalizer taps be equal to N = 2d
2
+ 1 where d
2
is an
integer.
Perfect equalization means that
q = e
d
= (0, 0, . . . , 0
. .
d1 zeroes
, 1, 0, . . . , 0, 0)
T
where d zeroes precede the 1 and d is an integer representing the overall
delay, a parameter to be optimized.
Unfortunately, perfect equalization is dicult to achieve and does not always
yield the best performance.
0
c 2010, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect8 6)

Zero Forcing Equalizer

With a zero-forcing (ZF) equalizer, the tap coecients w are chosen to
minimize the peak distortion of the equalized channel, dened as
D
p
=
1
|q
d
|
N+L1

n=0
n=d
|q
n
q
n
|
where q = ( q
0
, . . . , q
N+L1
)
T
is the desired equalized channel and the delay
d is a positive integer chosen to have the value d = d
1
+ d
2
.
Lucky showed that if the initial distortion without equalization is less than
unity, i.e.,
D =
1
|p
d
1
|
L

n=0
n=d
1
|p
n
| < 1 ,
then D
p
is minimized by those N tap values which simultaneously cause
q
j
= q
j
for d d
2
j d + d
2
. However, if the initial distortion before
equalization is greater than unity, the ZF criterion is not guaranteed to
minimize the peak distortion.
0
c 2010, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect8 7)

Zero Forcing Equalizer

For the case when q = e
T
d
the equalized channel is given by
q = (q
0
, . . . , q
d
1
1
, 0, . . . , 0, 1, 0, . . . , 0, q
d
1
+N
, . . . , q
N+L1
)
T
.
In this case the equalizer forces zeroes into the equalized channel and, hence,
the name zero-forcing equalizer.
If the ZF equalizer has an innite number of taps it is possible to select
the tap weights so that D
p
= 0, i.e., q = q. Assuming that q
n
=
n0
this
condition means that
Q(z) = 1 = W(z)P(z) .
Therefore,
W(z) =
1
P(z)
and the ideal ZF equalizer has a discrete transfer function that is simply the
inverse of overall channel P(z).
0
c 2010, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect8 8)

Equalizer Tap Solution

For a known channel impulse response, the tap gains of the ZF equalizer can
be found by the direct solution of a simple set of linear equations. To do so,
we form the matrix
P = [p(d
1
), . . . , p(d), . . . , p(N + d
1
1)]
and the vector
q = ( q
d
1
, . . . , q
d
, . . . , q
N+d
1
1
)
T
.
Then the vector of optimal tap gains, w
op
, satises
w
T
op
P = q
T
w
op
= (P
1
)
T
q .
0
c 2010, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect8 9)

Example
Suppose that a system has the channel vector
p = (0.90, 0.15, 0.20, 0.10, 0.05)
T
,
where p
i
= 0, i < 0, i > 4. The initial distortion before equalization is
D =
1
|p
0
|
4

n=1
|p
n
| = 0.5555
and, therefore, the minimum distortion is achieved with the ZF solution.
Suppose that we wish to design a 3-tap ZF equalizer. Since p
0
is the com-
ponent of p having the largest magnitude, d
1
= 0 and the equalizer delay
is chosen as d = d
1
+ d
2
= 1. The desired response is q = e
T
1
so that
q = (0, 1, 0)
T
.
0
c 2010, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect8 10)

Example
We then construct the matrix
P = [p(0), p(1), p(2)]
=
_

_
0.90 0.15 0.20
0.00 0.90 0.15
0.00 0.00 0.90
_

_
and obtain the optimal tap solution
w
op
= (P
1
)
T
q = (0, 1.11111, 0.185185)
T
.
The overall response of the channel and equalizer is
q = ( 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.194, 0.148, 0.037, 0.009, 0, . . .)
T
.
Hence, the distortion after equalization is
D
min
=
1
|q
0
|
6

n=1
|q
n
q
n
| = 0.388 .
0
c 2011, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect11b 11)

Adaptive Solution
In practice, the channel impulse response is unknown to the receiver and a
known nite length sequence a is used to train the equalizer.
During this training mode, the equalizer taps can be obtained by using the
following steepest-descent recursive algorithm:
w
n+1
j
= w
n
j
+
n
a
njd
1
, j = 0, . . . , N 1 , (1)
where the training sequence a is assumed real-valued and known

n
= a
nd
a
n
= a
nd

N1

i=0
w
i
y
ni
(2)
is the error sequence, {w
n
j
} is the set of equalizer tap gains at epoch n.
is an adaptation step-size that can be optimized to trade o convergence
rate and steady state bit error rate performance.
0
c 2011, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect11b 12)

Adaptive Solution
Fact: The adaptation rule in (1) attempts to force the crosscorrelations

n
a
njd
1
, j = 0, . . . , N 1, to zero.
To see that this leads to the desired solution we note
E[
n
a
njd
1
] = E[a
nd
a
njd
1
]
N1

i=0
L

=0
w
i
p

E[a
ni
a
njd
1
]
=
2
a
_
_

d
2
j

N1

i=0
w
i
p
j+d
1
i
_
_
=
2
a
(
d
2
j
q
j+d
1
) , j = 0, 1, . . . , N 1 , (3)
where
2
a
= E[|a
k
|
2
].
Fact: The conditions E[
n
a
njd
1
] = 0 are satised when q
d
= 1 and q
i
= 0
for d d
2
i < d and d < i d + d
2
, which is the zero forcing solution.
Note the ensemble average over the noise and the data symbol alphabet.
0
c 2011, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect11b 13)

Adaptive Solution
After training the equalizer, a decision-feedback mechanism is typically em-
ployed where the sequence of symbol decisions a is used to update the tap
coecients. This mode is called the data mode and allows the equalizer to
track variations in the channel vector p. In the data mode,
w
n+1
j
= w
n
j
+
n
a
njd
1
, j = 0, . . . , N 1 ,
where the error term
n
in (2) becomes

n
= a
nd

N1

i=0
w
i
y
ni
and, again, a
nd
is the decision on the equalizer output a
n
delayed by d
samples.
0
c 2011, Georgia Institute of Technology (lect11b 14)