Equalization of time-varying channels using the quantized least mean-fourth algorithm

Adaptive equalization is undoubtedly one of the cornerstones of digital communication as it allows for fast and reliable data transmission over practical channels that are non-ideal and that are plagued with serious problems such as signal dispersion and non-Gaussian interferences. In such cases, the performance of the well-known least-mean square (LMS) algorithm or that of any of its variants remains sub-optimal at best. As a remedy to this, the least-mean fourth (LMF) algorithm was later proposed but its high computational load was found to be a constraining factor in its practical implementation, particularly for real-time applications. Inspired from a previous work done on the LMS, we recently proposed a new algorithm, termed LMF-PTQ, combining the power of the LMF with the implementational advantages of the power-of-two quantization scheme. In this work, we demonstrate, through an extensive simulation study, the effectiveness of our proposed LMF-PTQ algorithm in the equalization of a time-varying channel in a CDMA system which suffers from both signal dispersion and non-Gaussian disturbances. The results obtained so far are very encouraging and provide us with ample enthusiasm to investigate the proposed algorithm further.