DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS LAB

Lab 9– Linear Equalization

In this lab, we see a simple example to illustrate how we can equalize the receive signal. While
the Viterbi equalizer gives very good performance, it is computationally intensive, prompting us
to search for simpler alternatives. As a simple example, suppose that we receive the transmit
signal with two antennas. Let the channel from the transmitter to receiver 1 be
h1 ( n )=δ ( n ) +0.5 δ (n−1) and let the channel from the transmitter to receiver 2 be
h2 ( n )=δ ( n ) −0.25 δ( n−1). Both channels have ISI. A simple equalizer would just add the
received signal at the first receive antenna with twice that at the second receive antenna and
the ISI is gone! Can you convince yourself that this eliminates ISI?

clear all;clc;
N = 1e6;
ebno = 0:5:20;
nvar= 10.^(-0.1*ebno);
for nv = 1:length(nvar)
s = sign(randn(1, N));
y1 = filter([1 0.5], 1, s)+sqrt(nvar(nv))*(randn(1, N)+j*randn(1,
N))/sqrt(2);
y2 = filter([1 -0.25], 1, s)+sqrt(nvar(nv))*(randn(1, N)+j*randn(1,
N))/sqrt(2);
z = (y1+2*y1)/2;
ber(nv) = sum(sign(real(z)) ~= s)/N;
end
figure; semilogy(ebno, ber);
xlabel('Eb/No');ylabel('BER');

Questions

1. Suppose the two channels from the transmitter to the two receivers were
h1 ( n )=δ ( n ) +0.5 δ ( n−1 ) and h2 ( n )=δ ( n ) −0.5 δ( n−1). How could you then eliminate the
ISI?
2. Can you implement this very same lab using simulink?