Performance analysis of decision-feedback equalisation for cellular mobile radio with cochannel interference and fading

The error probability of minimum-mean-square-error decision-feedback equalisation (MMSE-DFE) is evaluated for digital cellular mobile radio systems in the presence of cochannel interference (CCI) and is compared with linear equalisation (LE). The main contribution of the paper is that this analysis accounts for pulse waveform, modulation and fading of the signal of interest, as well as the CCI. Quadrature-amplitude modulation (QAM) signalling in frequency-selective and quasi-static channels is considered. The CCI is treated as a stationary process, when caused by random phase and symbol-timing offsets relative to the signal of interest. Analysis includes techniques combining antenna diversity. The performance improvement as a function of taps in both feedforward and feedback filters is quantified. Owing to residual intersymbol interference (ISI) and CCI, the evaluation of the error probability is extremely complicated and time consuming in simulation. To overcome this issue, an efficient method based upon Gauss quadrature rules (GQR) is presented to compute the error probability. The method is not limited due to interference statistics and it yields remarkable advantages compared with other methods. The convergence of finite-length results to their infinite-length counterparts is also provided. Unlike the case of white noise, the simulations reveal that with the same finite length the DFE is unable to outperform the linear equaliser in a CCI-dominated channel if the feedback filter is of insufficient length.