Equalization for MIMO-OFDM Systems with
Insufficient Cyclic Prefix
Tri Pham∗ , Tho Le-Ngoc† , Graeme Woodward♯ , Philippa A. Martin∗ , Khoa Tran Phan†
∗
ECE Department, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
† Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, McGill University, Canada.
♯ Wireless Research Center (WRC), University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Abstract—We investigate multiple input multiple output
(MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)
systems that operate with insufficient cyclic prefix (CP). Us-
ing a CP shorter than the channel delay spread can enable
a significant improvement in bandwidth utilization or range
extension for OFDM networks at the cost of increased inter-
symbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI).
We first analyze the effect of ICI and ISI on the received signal.
A bi-directional M-algorithm (BDMA) is then proposed for high-
performance trellis-based equalization to construct an iterative
interference mitigation and detection process. Simulations show
that, after only 2 iterations, the bit error rate (BER) of the
proposed equalization scheme can converge to that of a sufficient-
CP system even when the channel delay spread is 6 times longer
than the insufficient CP.
I. I NTRODUCTION
In OFDM systems, the CP overhead can be significant, espe-
cially for long range transmission. For example, in LTE/LTE-
Advanced [1], the extended CP length is about 25% of the
useful data transmission time. If the OFDM system can still
provide satisfactory performance using a shorter CP, there is
potential for significant improvement in bandwidth efficiency.
Alternatively, longer channel delays can be tolerated for a
given CP length, which extends coverage.
Insufficient CP in OFDM transmission leads to interference
in the form of ISI and ICI, which affects the data detection
process and, if ignored, can lead to a large performance
degradation [2]. MIMO-OFDM systems further complicate
receiver design. To alleviate this problem, a number of data
detection methods for insufficient CP systems have been pro-
posed [3]–[8]. Insufficient CP MIMO-OFDM transmission can
be equalized by a time domain (TD) finite impulse response
filter, which can shorten the MIMO channel response (to be
within the CP) [3]. In [4], frequency-domain (FD) per tone
equalization (PTEQ) was proposed. Precoding techniques are
used to remove the distortion due to insufficient CP in [5]. In
[6], spatial and frequency degrees-of-freedom in the received
sample vectors are considered for interference suppression.
Another approach is to employ iterative tail cancellation and
cyclic reconstruction to eliminate ISI and ICI as shown in [7],
[8].
Most of the above techniques are either: 1) Not designed
for the case of channel delay spread being significantly longer
than the CP [3] or 2) require modification to the transmitters
[5] or 3) require a channel decoder involved in the iterative
978-1-5090-1698-3/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
equalization process [8]. A different approach from these
is trellis-based equalization, which have traditionally been
an effective method for combatting multipath interference.
However, only a few trellis-based equalization techniques have
been proposed for insufficient CP OFDM systems [9], [10].
Although both techniques can achieve the performance of
sufficient CP transmission even when the channel delay spread
far exceeds the CP length, their designs are limited to single
input multiple output systems. The extensions to MIMO would
lead to impractical complexity. Motivated by the performance
achieved in [10], we investigate trellis-based equalization for
insufficient CP MIMO-OFDM systems.
In this work, our main contribution is an iterative trellis-
based equalization method for insufficient CP MIMO-OFDM
with practical complexity. We starts by analyzing the insuffi-
cient CP induced interference and its effect on MIMO-OFDM
transmission. From the interference model, we propose an
efficient receiver design for insufficient CP MIMO-OFDM.
First, the ISI and part of the ICI are cancelled by feedback of
detected data. Then, the BDMA algorithm is proposed to build
an effective trellis-based scheme for equalizing the remaining
ICI. This offers a fast convergence of the iterative reception
process. One of the key differences between the developed
equalizer and [9], [10] is that the equalizer trellis state is
defined by desired sub-carrier symbols only. This allows a
significant reduction in complexity for MIMO systems. The
second difference is that developed BDMA involves a bi-
directional detection process to provide a good approximation
of the remaining ICI, and thus improve overall detection qual-
ity. In addition, to further decrease the detection complexity,
the M-algorithm [11] is incorporated into the BDMA process.
Simulation results show that, with only 2 iterations, the BER
of the proposed BDMA equalizer can closely approach that of
a sufficient CP system even when the channel delay spread is
more than 6 times the CP length. This is equivalent to a 84%
reduction in the bandwidth reserved for CP overhead.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL AND I NTERFERENCE F ORMULATION
We consider a MIMO-OFDM system with 𝑁𝑇 transmit and
𝑁𝑅 receive antennas and using A-ary quadrature amplitude
modulation (A-QAM) for sub-carrier modulation. Data bits
are mapped to a complex valued symbol 𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (𝑘) ∈ 𝑨,
where 𝑨 is the A-ary constellation set, and 𝑣, 𝑚, and 𝑘
denote the indices of the transmit antenna, OFDM symbol,
and sub-carrier, respectively. For a 𝑣 𝑡ℎ data stream, a N- where (𝑛)𝑁 is the residue 𝑛 of modulo 𝑁 , ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚 indicates
point inverse FFT (IFFT) is applied to the vector 𝑿 𝑣,𝑚 = the channel realization when the 𝑚𝑡ℎ OFDM symbol is
[𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (0), 𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (1), ..., 𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (𝑁 − 1)] to form the 𝑚𝑡ℎ OFDM transmitted and 𝑤𝑢 (𝑛) presents the noise at the antenna 𝑢.
symbol whose TD sample is denoted as 𝑥𝑣,𝑚 (𝑛) (where 𝑛 is Applying the FFT to (2), the frequency domain sample at the
the TD index). CP insertion happens before transmission starts 𝑎𝑡ℎ sub-carrier is
and the CP length is 𝐺 sample intervals. 𝐿−1
∑ −𝑗2𝜋𝑎𝜏𝑙
We consider a multipath frequency selective fading envi- 𝑅𝑢,𝑣 (𝑎) = 𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (𝑎) 𝑓 (𝑙)ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚 𝑒 𝑁

ronment in which the channel coefficients only vary between 𝑙=0

OFDM symbols. A channel between the 𝑢𝑡ℎ receive antenna 𝐿−1
∑ 𝑁
∑ −1
𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (𝑘) −𝑗2𝜋𝑘𝜏𝑙 𝜌𝜏𝑘𝑙 −𝐺 − 1
and the 𝑣 𝑡ℎ transmit antenna can be represented by a complex + ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚 𝑒 𝑁 (3)
𝑁 1 − 𝜌𝑘
baseband model of 𝐿 discrete Rayleigh fading paths [12] 𝑙=𝐷 𝑘=0,𝑘∕=𝑎
𝐿−1
(
𝐿−1
∑ ∑ 𝑋𝑣,𝑚−1 (𝑎)(𝜏𝑙 − 𝐺) −𝑗2𝜋𝑎(𝜏𝑙 −𝐺)
ℎ𝑢,𝑣 (𝜏 ) = ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙 𝛿(𝑛 − 𝜏𝑙 ), + ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚−1 𝑒 𝑁
(1) 𝑁
𝑙=𝐷
𝑙=0
𝑁 −1
)
∑ 𝑋𝑣,𝑚−1 (𝑘) −𝑗2𝜋𝑘(𝜏𝑙 −𝐺) 1 − 𝜌𝑘𝜏𝑙 −𝐺
where the path gains ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙 are zero mean complex random + 𝑒 𝑁 ¨𝑢 (𝑎),
+𝑤
values with variance 𝜎𝑙2 , 𝜏𝑙 is the delay in sample intervals of 𝑁 1 − 𝜌𝑘
𝑘=0,𝑘∕=𝑎
path 𝑙, and 𝛿(𝑛) is the unit impulse response. As we consider
point to point communication, we can assume that all channels where 𝜌𝑘 = 𝑒𝑗2𝜋(𝑘−𝑎)/𝑁 and the function 𝑓 (𝑙) is defined as
{
between any pair of receive and transmit antennas have the
1 if 𝑙 < 𝐷
same path delay profile. On the other hand, for most fading 𝑓 (𝑙) = .
media, ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙 can be assumed independent [12], meaning (𝑁 − 𝜏𝑙 + 𝐺)/𝑁 if 𝑙 ≥ 𝐷.
𝐸{ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙 ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙′ } = 0, 𝑙 ∕= 𝑙′ . We also assume uncorrelated In (3), the 1𝑠𝑡 term represents the desired signal, the 2𝑛𝑑 and
antennas so 𝐸{ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙 ℎ𝑢′ ,𝑣′ ,𝑙 } = 0 for 𝑢 ∕= 𝑢′ or 𝑣 ∕= 𝑣 ′ . 3𝑡ℎ terms represent the ICI and ISI, respectively, and the last
Here, we consider OFDM systems with insufficient CP, term, 𝑤¨𝑢 (𝑎), is the noise at the 𝑎𝑡ℎ sub-carrier.
which means 𝜏𝐿−1 > 𝐺. Let 𝐷 < 𝐿 be the number of paths Equation (3) only considers the transmission between one
with delay lower than (or equal) the CP. The cause of ISI and transmit and one receive antenna. As there are 𝑁𝑇 transmit
ICI from a single path 𝑙 among the 𝐿 − 𝐷 paths lying outside antennas in our MIMO system, the overall received signal at
the CP of a channel is shown in Fig. 1. the 𝑢𝑡ℎ antenna is
𝑁𝑇
∑
𝑅𝑢 (𝑎) = 𝑅𝑢,𝑣 (𝑎). (4)
𝑣=1

Substituting (3) into (4), we have

𝑁𝑇
∑ 𝐿−1
∑ −𝑗2𝜋𝑎𝜏𝑙
𝑅𝑢 (𝑎) = 𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (𝑎) 𝑓 (𝑙)ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚 𝑒 𝑁 (5)
𝑣=1 𝑙=0
𝑁𝑇 𝐿−1
∑ ∑ 𝑁
∑ −1
𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (𝑘) −𝑗2𝜋𝑘𝜏𝑙 𝜌𝑘𝜏𝑙 −𝐺 − 1
+ ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚 𝑒 𝑁
𝑣=1 𝑙=𝐷
𝑁 1 − 𝜌𝑘
𝑘=0,𝑘∕=𝑎
𝑁𝑇 𝐿−1
(
∑ ∑ 𝑋𝑣,𝑚−1 (𝑎) −𝑗2𝜋𝑎(𝜏𝑙 −𝐺)
+ ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚−1 𝑒 𝑁 (𝜏𝑙 − 𝐺)
𝑣=1 𝑙=𝐷
𝑁
𝑁 −1
)
∑ 𝑋𝑣,𝑚−1 (𝑘) −𝑗2𝜋𝑘(𝜏𝑙 −𝐺) 1 − 𝜌𝑘𝜏𝑙 −𝐺
Fig. 1. ICI and ISI caused by insufficient CP. + 𝑒 𝑁 +𝑤 ¨𝑢 (𝑎).
𝑁 1 − 𝜌𝑘
𝑘=0,𝑘∕=𝑎
𝑡ℎ
Let us consider the transmission between the 𝑣 (transmit) From (5), it can be seen that ICI and ISI are the sums of
and 𝑢𝑡ℎ (receive) antennas. The 𝑛𝑡ℎ sample of the received 𝑁 𝑁𝑇 scaled independent and identically distributed variables
signal after CP removal can be expressed as [10] drawn from a finite constellation. According to the central
𝐿−1
∑ limit theorem, if 𝑁 𝑁𝑇 is large enough, the interference is
𝑟𝑢,𝑣 (𝑛) = ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚 𝑥𝑣,𝑚 (𝑛 − 𝜏𝑙 )𝑁 𝜇(𝑛 − 𝜏𝑙 + 𝐺) approximately Gaussian distributed with a zero mean (due to
𝑙=0 the QAM constellation points having a zero mean). To verify
𝐿−1
∑ such approximation, a Chi-Square test is conducted on the
+ ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚−1 𝑥𝑣,𝑚−1 (𝑛 − 𝜏𝑙 + 𝐺)𝑁 sample vectors of ISI and ICI to identify if these samples
𝑙=𝐷 are normally distributed. Matlab simulations have shown that
× (1 − 𝜇(𝑛 − 𝜏𝑙 + 𝐺)) + 𝑤𝑢 (𝑛), (2) the interference distribution passes the test with a significance
level of 1.5% (the simulation parameters are shown in Section IV. R ECEIVER D ESIGN
V). This confirms that the interference distribution can be Figure 2 shows our proposed receiver design for insufficient
approximated by the Gaussian distribution. CP MIMO-OFDM. 𝒓 𝑢 is a sample sequence received from
antenna 𝑢 after the CP removal process for the current OFDM
III. S IGNAL TO I NTERFERENCE P LUS N OISE R ATIO symbol. In this design, detected data from previous OFDM
Let 𝑅𝑑,𝑢 (𝑎), 𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑖,𝑢 (𝑎) and 𝑅𝑖𝑠𝑖,𝑢 (𝑎) represent the useful, symbol and previous iteration is used to approximate the ISI
the ICI and the ISI parts of the received signal described in and part of the ICI in the current OFDM symbol for inter-
(5), respectively. The signal to interference plus noise ratio ference cancellation. The sub-sequent BDMA trellis equalizer
(SINR) at the 𝑢𝑡ℎ antenna is defined as mitigates the remaining ICI and provides data detection. We
{ } assume ideal channel state information known at the receiver.
𝐸 ∣𝑅𝑑,𝑢 (𝑎)∣2
𝑆𝐼𝑁 𝑅𝑢 = , (6)
𝐸 {∣𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑖,𝑢 (𝑎)∣2 } + 𝐸 {∣𝑅𝑖𝑠𝑖,𝑢 (𝑎)∣2 } + 𝜂0
where 𝜂0 is the noise power and the expectation is taken
over different channels and sub-carrier symbols. As the chan-
nel paths are assumed to be spatially uncorrelated and the
sub-carrier
{ symbols
} are also independent and un-correlated,
𝐸 ∣𝑅𝑑,𝑢 (𝑎)∣2 can be expressed and simplified as
⎧ 2 ⎫
⎨ ∑𝑁𝑇 𝐿−1
∑  ⎬
 −𝑗2𝜋𝑎𝜏𝑙

𝐸  𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (𝑎) 𝑓 (𝑙)ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚 𝑒 𝑁 
⎩  ⎭
𝑣=1 𝑙=0
𝑁𝑇
∑ { } 𝐿−1
∑ { }
= 𝐸 ∣𝑋𝑣,𝑚 (𝑎)∣2 𝐸 ∣𝑓 (𝑙)ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙,𝑚 ∣2
𝑣=1 𝑙=0 Fig. 2. Simplified receiver block diagram with 𝑁𝑅 receive antennas.
𝑁𝑇
∑ 𝐿−1
∑ 𝐿−1
∑
2
= 𝜎𝑋 (𝑓 (𝑙))2 𝜎𝑙2 = 𝑁𝑇 𝜎𝑋
2
(𝑓 (𝑙))2 𝜎𝑙2 , (7)
𝑣=1 𝑙=0 𝑙=0 A. ISI and ICI Mitigation
2
where 𝜎𝑋 denotes the average sub-carrier power. Using the ISI cancelation is performed by feeding back the hard
same assumptions and derivation steps, we also obtain decisions corresponding to the previous OFDM symbols to

−1  𝜏𝑙 −𝐺
2 approximate the current ISI via (5). The process of ISI
{ } 𝑁 𝜎 2 𝐿−1
∑ 𝑁
∑ 𝜌 − 1 
𝑇   cancellation is carried out by
𝐸 ∣𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑖,𝑢 (𝑎)∣2 = 𝑋
𝜎 2
𝑙  𝑘
 ,
𝑁2  1 − 𝜌𝑘  ˘ 𝑢 (𝑎) = 𝑅𝑢 (𝑎) − 𝑅
ˆ𝑖𝑠𝑖,𝑢 (𝑎).
𝑙=𝐷 𝑘=0,𝑘∕=𝑎 𝑅 (11)
(8)
( Assuming that it is effectively mitigated, the resulting signals
{ } 2 𝐿−1
∑
𝑁𝑇 𝜎 𝑋 are still affected by ICI and noise. The next part of the
𝐸 ∣𝑅𝑖𝑠𝑖,𝑢 (𝑎)∣2 = 2
𝜎𝑙2 (𝜏𝑙 − 𝐺)2 reception process is ICI mitigation. It is known that most
𝑁
𝑙=𝐷
 2 ) of the ICI energy comes from the 2𝑑 sub-carriers close to
∑  𝜌𝜏𝑙 −𝐺 − 1 
𝑁 −1
the desired sub-carrier (𝑑 is a small positive integer). This
𝑘
+   . (9) part of ICI, labeled 𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑖1,𝑢 (𝑎), would be dealt with by the
 1 − 𝜌𝑘 
𝑘=0,𝑘∕=𝑎
subsequent equalization process. In this stage, our goal is to
Substituting (8) and (9) into (6) and simplifying the expression, cancel the remaining ICI, labeled 𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑖2,𝑢 (𝑎). This can be done
𝑆𝐼𝑁 𝑅𝑢 can be expressed as by estimating 𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑖2,𝑢 (𝑎) from the current OFDM symbol hard
∑𝐿−1 decisions obtained from the previous iteration, 𝑅 ˆ𝑖𝑐𝑖2,𝑢 (𝑎) =
𝑁 2 𝑙=0 (𝑓 (𝑙))2 𝜎𝑙2 ( )
  , ∑𝑁𝑇 𝐿−1
∑ 𝑁
∑ −1
𝑋ˆ𝑣 (𝑘) −𝑗2𝜋𝑘𝜏𝑙 𝜌𝜏𝑙 −𝐺 − 1
∑𝐿−1 2 2
∑𝐿−1 2 ∑𝑁 −1  1−𝜌𝜏𝑘𝑙 −𝐺 2 ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙 𝑒 𝑁 𝑘
,
𝑙=𝐷 𝜎𝑙 (𝜏𝑙 − 𝐺) + 2 𝑙=𝐷 𝜎𝑙 𝑘=1  1−𝜌𝑘  + 𝜂 ¨0 𝑁 1 − 𝜌𝑘
𝑣=1 𝑙=𝐷 𝑘=0,
(10) 𝑘∈[𝑎−𝑑,𝑑+𝑑]
/
2
where 𝜂¨0 = 𝑁𝑁𝑇 𝜎𝜂20 . On average the SINR value is the same (12)
𝑋 ˘ 𝑢 (𝑎),
and subtracting it from the signal 𝑅
across all sub-carriers and is dependent on 𝑁 and 𝜏𝑙 − 𝐺,
the degree that the CP is exceeded for each path. We can also ˘ 𝑢 (𝑎) − 𝑅
𝑌𝑢 (𝑎) = 𝑅 ˆ𝑖𝑐𝑖2,𝑢 (𝑎). (13)
predict that the interference would cause an early error floor on
the BER performance of OFDM receivers if the channel delay B. BDMA Trellis Equalizer
is high. Therefore, in order to establish a reliable transmission In the context of insufficient CP OFDM, trellis based equal-
for insufficient CP systems, the receiver must have an effective izers have been shown to achieve satisfactory performance
interference mitigation/equalization process. with single transmit antenna [9], [10]. These can not be applied
to MIMO systems as the trellis size would become too large Since it is assumed that all the sub-carrier symbols are
for practical purposes. Therefore, in this section, we present a transmitted with equal probability, ln(𝑝(𝑿(𝑎))) is a constant
trellis-based design with lower complexity for MIMO systems. and can be neglected in the definition of 𝜇𝑢 (𝑎). The branch
1) Trellis for Equalization: Since the equalization process metric can then be computed as
is done in the frequency domain, the trellis state is defined 𝑁𝑅  2
∑  
to represent a group of sub-carrier symbols. In most cases, 𝜇(𝑎) = 𝑌𝑢 (𝑎) − 𝑌˜𝑢 (𝑎) . (20)
the complexity of a trellis based operation depends entirely 𝑢=1
on the trellis size, which in turn depends on the trellis state
The overall sequence metric, which is minimized by the right
definition. In MIMO-OFDM systems, the smallest possible
choice of 𝑿, is the sum of the branch metrics
state definition represents [𝑋1 (𝑎)𝑋2 (𝑎) . . . 𝑋𝑁𝑇 (𝑎)] (dropping
𝑁
∑ −1
the subscript 𝑚 for simplicity). So, the number of different
trellis states is 𝐴𝑁𝑇 . Ω(𝑿) = 𝜇(𝑎). (21)
2) BDMA Equalization: The equalization process is carried 𝑎=0

out by choosing the sequence that maximizes the likelihood It is trivial to see that a single state of our trellis can only
provide a hypothesis for the desired sub-carrier. In order to
𝑝(𝒀 1 , . . . , 𝒀 𝑁𝑅 , 𝑿) = 𝑝(𝒀 1 , 𝑿) . . . 𝑝(𝒀 𝑁𝑅 , 𝑿), (14)
provide the hypothesis for the ICI term, a decision feedback
where 𝑿 = [𝑿(0), . . . , 𝑿(𝑎), . . . , 𝑿(𝑁 − 1)] and process is applied here. Assuming that the detection process
𝑿(𝑎) = [𝑋1 (𝑎), . . . , 𝑋𝑁𝑇 (𝑎)]. Let us define 𝒀 𝑢 ([𝑛1 , 𝑛2 ]) = starts from 𝑎 = 0, by tracing back 𝑑 previous states on the
[𝑌𝑢 (𝑛1 ), . . . , 𝑌𝑢 (𝑛2 )] where 𝑛1 < 𝑛2 ∈ Z + . By applying the survivor path of the current state, we can retrieve 𝑑 × 𝑁𝑇
probability chain rule, we have symbols corresponding to the sub-carriers 𝑎−𝑑 to 𝑎−1. This is
𝑝(𝒀 𝑢 , 𝑿) = 𝑝(𝑿(𝑁 − 1)) × ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ × 𝑝(𝑿(0)) only half what is needed to approximate the ICI term as shown
in (18). Therefore, we propose a bi-directional procedure in
×𝑝(𝑌𝑢 (𝑁 − 1)∣𝒀 𝑢 ([0, 𝑁 − 2]), 𝑿) × . . .
which the detection process would be able to obtain all the
×𝑝(𝑌𝑢 (0)∣𝑿). (15) symbols corresponding to the sub-carriers 𝑎 − 𝑑 to 𝑎 + 𝑑 via
This is equivalent to equalizing the received signal twice (from a different direction
𝑁 −1
each time). In addition, the M-algorithm [11] is utilized for
∑
ln(𝑝(𝒀 𝑢 , 𝑿)) = ln(𝑝(𝑌𝑢 (𝑎)∣𝒀 𝑢 ([0, 𝑎 − 1], 𝑿)) further reducing the detection complexity. This is achieved by
𝑎=0
preserving only 𝑀 paths with lowest path metrics for each
+ ln(𝑝(𝑿(𝑎))). (16) detection epoch instead of keeping all the paths. The overall
equalization, namely the BDMA, is summarized below.
This means that the metric for the whole sequence is a sum
∙ An equalization process is carried out with M-algorithm
of the metrics at successive symbol times.
and decision feedback; the equalization direction is from
Since the OFDM tones are independent from each other,
𝑎 = 𝑁 − 1 to 𝑎 = 0. The survivor path with length 𝑑
the dependence between 𝑌𝑢 (𝑎) and 𝒀 𝑢 ([0, 𝑎 − 1] is due
at each state is saved for the next detection phase. Note
to the ICI. To simplify the detection process, we use the
that only half the ICI part of 𝑌˜𝑢 (𝑎) can be computed.
approximation 𝑝(𝑌𝑢 (𝑎)∣𝒀 𝑢 ([0, 𝑎 − 1], 𝑿) ≈ 𝑝(𝑌𝑢 (𝑎)∣𝑿). As 𝑛𝑑
∙ A 2 equalization process with the same M-algorithm
the channel response is assumed to be deterministic and the
and decision feedback is carried out on the resultant ICI
ICI distribution is approximately Gaussian, we can assume
mitigated signal. This starts from 𝑎 = 0 to 𝑎 = 𝑁 − 1.
that each element in 𝒀 𝑢 is Gaussian when conditioned on the
The survivor paths obtained from the previous detection
data sequence 𝑿. Hence,
( ) phase allow a full 𝑌˜𝑢 (𝑎) to be calculated, leading to better
1 −∣𝑌𝑢 (𝑎) − 𝑌˜𝑢 (𝑎)∣2 detection accuracy.
𝑝(𝑌𝑢 (𝑎)∣𝑿) = exp , (17)
𝜋𝜂𝐼𝑛 2𝜂𝐼𝑛 The proposed receiver uses approximately 2𝑁𝑅 𝑁𝑇 𝑁 (2𝑁 +
𝑀 𝐴𝑁𝑇 𝑑(𝐿 − 𝐷)) complex multiplications, while the RISIC
where 𝑌˜𝑢 (𝑎) is the mean of 𝑅𝑢 (𝑎) conditioned on 𝑿. As the algorithm [7] uses approximately 2𝑁𝑅 𝑁𝑇 𝑁 (2𝑁 + 𝐴𝑁𝑇 ).
remaining ICI energy comes from a few tones on each side Overall our method is approximately 2.5 times more complex
of the considered subcarrier, ICI can be estimated from these. with the parameters described in Section V. However, we show
Therefore, 𝑌˜𝑢 (𝑎) = 𝑅𝑑,𝑢 (𝑎) + 𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑖1,𝑢 (𝑎) and 𝑅𝑖𝑐𝑖1,𝑢 (𝑎) is that our method provides significantly better BER.
𝑁𝑇 𝐿−1 𝑎+𝑑
( )
∑ ∑ ∑ 𝑋𝑣 (𝑘) −𝑗2𝜋𝑘𝜏𝑙 𝜌𝑘𝜏𝑙 −𝐺 − 1
ℎ𝑢,𝑣,𝑙 𝑒 𝑁 . V. S IMULATION R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
𝑣=1 𝑙=𝐷
𝑁 1 − 𝜌𝑘 Our simulations consider un-coded 2 × 2 MIMO-OFDM
𝑘=𝑎−𝑑,𝑘∕=𝑎
(18) system with LTE-OFDM parameters, 𝑁 = 128, 𝑁𝑠 = 76
The sub-branch metric corresponding to the 𝑢𝑡ℎ received (the number of useful sub-carriers), 𝐺 = 9 (standard LTE CP
antenna, denoted as 𝜇𝑢 (𝑎), is given by length) and 4QAM for sub-carrier modulation. The channel
𝜇𝑢 (𝑎) = − ln(𝑝(𝑌𝑢 (𝑎)∣𝑿)) − ln(𝑝(𝑿(𝑎))) (19) path coefficients are assumed to stay static for a duration of
 2 4 OFDM symbols and then they vary independently from one
 
≡ 𝑌𝑢 (𝑎) − 𝑌˜𝑢 (𝑎) − ln(𝑝(𝑿(𝑎))). static period to another. The sub-channel model considered
in our simulations consists of 𝐿 = 6 equivalently spaced
Rayleigh fading paths with exponential power decay profile
and a RMS delay spread of 𝜏𝑟𝑚𝑠 = 𝜏𝐿−1 /2. In all simulations,
the proposed design considers 𝑑 = 3 as it is realized via
simulation that 90% of the ICI energy comes from the sub-
carriers within the interval [𝑎 − 3, 𝑎 + 3].
Figure 3 and 4 show the simulated BER results for max-
imum channel delay of 𝜏𝐿−1 = 30 and 𝜏𝐿−1 = 60, re-
spectively. The notation ‘PM’ indicates the proposed method;
‘Ite’ indicates the number of iterations and ‘M’ indicates the
value of the 𝑀 factor utilized. Here, our proposed scheme is
compared with a standard ML data detector, which operates on
individual sub-carriers, and the RISIC algorithm proposed in
[7]. The ML detector searches for all possible combinations
of symbols transmitted on sub-carriers from different trans-
mit antennas and computes the corresponding MSE for ML
detection. The BER results for the ML receiver are obtained
for both scenarios of insufficient CP (‘ISCP’) and sufficient
CP (‘SCP’). In the first case, the CP is kept at 𝐺 = 9 while
it is extended to the maximum delay spread for the latter.
It can be seen that at sufficiently high SNRs, the proposed
method outperforms both ML-ISCP and RISIC. For delay
spread of 𝜏𝐿−1 = 30, with 2 iterations, the proposed algorithm
can achieve the interference-free detection accuracy: Fig. 3
indicates that the ‘PM:Ite2-M2’ and ‘PM:Ite2-M16’ curves
coincide with the ‘ML-SCP’ curve at high 𝐸𝑏 /𝑁0 . The close
performance between the ‘PM:Ite2-M2’ and ‘PM:Ite2-M16’
encourages the use of 𝑀 = 2 for good performance and
significant complexity reduction. For much larger delay spread
of 𝜏𝐿−1 = 60, as shown in Fig. 4, the ‘PM:Ite2-M2’ can
still approach the ‘ML-SCP’ and is much better than the other
curves at high 𝐸𝑏 /𝑁0 . The RISIC algorithm performance is
significantly worse even with more iterations.
Fig. 3. BER performance of BDMA algorithm, 𝜏𝐿−1 = 30.
VI. C ONCLUSION
This paper considers a receiver design for MIMO-OFDM
systems using CP much shorter than channel delay spread
Fig. 4. BER performance of BDMA algorithm, 𝜏𝐿−1 = 60.
to achieve low transmission overhead and propose a high-
performance BDMA algorithm for trellis-based detection.
Simulation results indicate that with only 2 iterations, the
proposed BDMA can offer a detection performance close to
that in the case of sufficient CP condition, which requires
6 times the CP length. Yet, the BDMA complexity can
be considerably reduced with small degradation in reception
accuracy by configuring the 𝑀 parameter.
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