On ML Bit Detection of Binary Signals with Intersymbol Interference in Gaussian Noise

Various forms and properties of the maximum-likelihood (ML) bit detector structure for binary signals with intersymbol interference in the presence of additive stationary Gaussian noise are presented and two receiver implementation forms are considered. A simple analytical approximation which also has a heuristic interpretation as a lower bound on the bit probability of error for this detector is presented. The performance of this detector for typical small and moderate degrees of intersymbol interference is presented and compared to other detectors. Both cases indicate that the analytical approximation is quite tight and thus useful in predicting the performance of this highly nonlinear device.