Bit Error Rate Minimizing Channel Shortening Equalizers for Single Carrier Cyclic Prefixed Systems

Single carrier cyclic prefixed (SCCP) communications are a close relative of multicarrier communications. Both types of systems are robust to multipath, provided that the channel delay spread is shorter than the guard interval between transmitted blocks. If this condition is not met, a channel shortening equalizer can be used to shorten the channel to the desired length. Previous work on channel shortening has largely been in the context of digital subscriber lines, a wireline system that allows bit allocation, thus it has focused on maximizing the bit rate for a given bit error rate (BER). We propose and evaluate a channel shortener that attempts to directly minimize the BER for an SCCP system. The problem is shown to be analytically distinct from the analogous problem in multicarrier systems.