Whitened matched filtering versus channel shortening for ST-BICM over MIMO ISI channel

We investigate two different prefiltering strategies, i.e., channel shortening and whitened matched filtering, to decode an ST-BICM over MIMO ISI channels using a trellis based post-detector. While those two approaches have been exhaustively visited in the past, their fair comparison in terms of trade off between complexity and performance was to the authors´ knowledge never tackled. This paper aims at giving some valuable insights about the respective benefits of these two prefiltering methods with respect to the channel characteristics and overall receiver complexity.