MLSE for correlated diversity sources and unknown time-varying frequency-selective Rayleigh-fading channels

Yu and Pasupathy (see ibid., vol.43, p. 1534-44, 1995) derived a maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) receiver structure for unknown time varying frequency-selective Rayleigh-fading channels and uncorrelated diversity sources. This receiver design is extended to the case of correlated diversity sources. Correlated diversity sources typically arise with space diversity, where constraints on antenna volume require that diversity antennae be placed too closely together. Analytic and simulated bit-error rate (BER) curves are presented for receivers which exploit and ignore the correlation. In the former case, we find a small BER improvement that reduces with decreasing correlation. However, for a fixed receiver complexity, superior performance is achieved when the correlation is ignored