A study of different decoders for the new rotation spreading matrix for block spread OFDM in UWB channels

This paper presents a study into different decoders for the new Rotation Spreading Matrix proposed for Block Spread OFDM (BSOFDM). It presents simulation results for the Maximum Likelihood (ML), Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE), Zero Forcing (ZF), Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) and Equal Gain Combining (EGC) decoders across the four IEEE defined Ultra-Wideband (UWB) channels CM1 to CM4. While it is well known that the ML decoder should theoretically outperform all the other decoders, practically due to its complexity it is not a viable option. It can be shown that MMSE, for BSOFDM with the proposed new Rotation Spreading Matrix, has a good performance at low SNR and has been proven to be a practical solution in wireless communications systems due to its simplicity and performance.