Bitrate maximizing time-domain equalizer design for DMT-based systems

A time-domain equalizer (TEQ) is inserted in discrete multitone (DMT) receivers to impose channel shortening and hence overcome the need for a too long cyclic prefix. Many algorithms have been developed to initialize this TEQ, but none of them really optimizes the bitrate. In this paper, we present a new bitrate maximizing TEQ (BM-TEQ), cost function that results in a TEQ design/initialization that outperforms any other TEQ design. In the derivation, we exploit the fact that the frequency-domain equalizers (FEQ) do not alter the SNR on the individual tones. The performance of this BM-TEQ comes close to the performance of the per-tone equalizer (PTEQ), an alternative DMT equalization structure that ensures consistently better performance than a TEQ. Finally, the presented BM-TEQ design is also used in a "per group" equalization scheme (PGEQ), which is intermediate (in terms of memory requirement and performance) between TEQ and PTEQ. The PGEQ design then encompasses BM-TEQ and PTEQ design procedures as extreme cases.