A Study of Frequency-Domain Signal Detection for Single-Carrier Transmission

Abstract-One-tap frequency-domain equalization (FDE) can significantly improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of single-carrier (SC) transmission in a frequency-selective fading channel. However, a big performance gap from the theoretical lower bound still exists due to the presence of residual intersymbol interference (ISI) after FDE. In this paper, we point out that the frequency-domain received SC signal can be represented similar to the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiplexing case and then, we propose a new frequency-domain block signal detection, which combines FDE with MIMO signal detection. We apply well-known minimum mean square error (MMSE) detection and Vertical-Bell Laboratories layered spacetime architecture (V-BLAST) detection and evaluate, by computer simulation, the achievable BER performance of SC transmission.