Enhanced MIMO LMMSE Turbo Equalization: Algorithm, Simulations, and Undersea Experimental Results

In this paper, an enhanced linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) turbo equalization scheme is proposed for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems with bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) in the time domain and multiplexing in the space domain. The proposed turbo equalization scheme outperforms the conventional LMMSE turbo equalization by adopting two new signal processing techniques. First, it performs hybrid soft interference cancellation (HSOIC) by subtracting the soft decisions of the interfering symbols, and the soft decisions are calculated by using a hybrid of the a priori information at the equalizer input and the a posteriori information at the equalizer output. Second, it employs a novel block-wise reliability-based ordering scheme such that more “reliable” symbols are detected before the less “reliable” ones to reduce error propagation in HSOIC. The symbol reliability information is based on the symbol a priori probability, as a unique byproduct of turbo detection, thus can be obtained with very small overhead. A low-complexity approximation of the enhanced MIMO LMMSE turbo equalization is also proposed to balance the tradeoff between complexity and performance. The performance of the enhanced MIMO LMMSE turbo equalization has been verified through both numerical simulations and the undersea experimental data collected in the SPACE08 experiment launched near Martha´s Vineyard, Edgartown, MA, in 2008.