TRADE-OFF BETWEEN SNR AND ISI IN MULTI-CHANNEL ZERO FORCING

EQUALIZERS
Timothy F. Settle, Michael D. Zoltowski, and Venkataramanan Balakrishnan
Purdue University
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
West Lafayette, Indiana
settle@ecn.purdue.edu, mikedz@ecn.purdue.edu, ragu@ecn.purdue.edu
past samples (not symbols) from each channel, encompassing a fraction of the mainlobe of the symbol waveform [3].
Equalization with sampling L times per symbol with L > 1
will be referred to as sample-spaced equalization.
There are several advantages that accrue from the fact
that we have access to multiple channel outputs. For example, it is well-known that in the case of a single channel, if
the channel frequency response contains a null in the baseband, a linear equalizer will amplify noise power in the
vicinity of the null. This problem is commonly referred to
as noise enhancement. However, this is not true with multiple channels; here, noise enhancement arises only when
the channels have a spectral null at or near the same frequency. Another advantage with multiple channels is that
equalization can be achieved with FIR filters whose length
roughly equals that of the channel impulse responses; in
contrast, exact equalization of a single channel almost always requires an IIR equalizer.
Referring to Figure 1, designing a linear equalizer for
linear time-invariant channels requires the equalizing filter
coefficients to effect a frequency response for the overall
system from s(n) to y (n) which has unit magnitude and
linear phase. We however, propose that by deliberately permitting equalization errors, i.e., allowing deviations from
unit magnitude and linear phase of the overall frequency response, yields performance gains under certain conditions.
In particular we seek to improve the signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) in the symbol decision statistics beyond that achieved
with exact equalization design methods.
We will make use of the bit-error-rate (BER) of the symbol decisions as a performance parameter to substantiate our
claims. We demonstrate that as we increase the allowable
equalization error, an attendant improvement in the BER
of the symbol decisions is achieved. In other words, by
permitting an increase in ISI we are able to achieve a significant decrease in the power of the additive noise in the
symbol decision statistic, while having negligible impact on
the signal power in the symbol decision statistic.

ABSTRACT
Multi-channel linear equalizers are commonly employed in
digital communication systems to mitigate channel distortions and thereby reduce inter-symbol interference (ISI).
Traditional multi-channel linear equalizer design for linear time-invariant channels requires synthesis of equalizing
filters such that the frequency response of the overall system has unit magnitude and linear phase. In this work, we
investigate the efficacy of deliberately allowing equalization errors, i.e., allowing deviations from unit magnitude
and linear phase of the overall frequency response, with
the goal of increasing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the
symbol decision statistics. Our approach relies on numerical convex optimization based on linear matrix inequalities.
Our investigations reveal that as the allowable equalization
error is increased, the mean-square error (MSE) of the postequalizer signal constellation decreases despite the attendant
increase in ISI. This implies that the trade-off between SNR
and ISI in the symbol decision statistic weighs more heavily
in favor of SNR improvement for a surprisingly large range
of allowable equalization error.
1. INTRODUCTION
To our knowledge, in all previous equalizers proposed for
narrowband digital communication systems that use Nyquist
pulses, the decision statistic for a given symbol value is a
linear combination of past and future symbol-spaced samples. The total number of samples required depends on
the effective duration of the tails of the symbol waveform.
These samples may be taken across multiple channels which
may be either different antenna outputs or virtual channels
as synthesized in fractionally-spaced equalization. We will
refer to this type of equalization as symbol-spaced equalization.
In many scenarios the multi-path delay spread, , is a
fraction of the symbol time interval. In some cases, oversampling permits one to compute the equalized decision
statistic for a given symbol value from a small number of
This research work is supported by the National Science Foundation
under grant no. MIPS-9708309.

2. PROBLEM FORMULATION
2.1. SIGNAL MODEL

Transmitter
x(n)
Modulator

2.2. ZERO FORCING EQUALIZATION

For sample-spaced zero-forcing equalizers, exact equalization requires the gi (n)s to satisfy the equation

hRF1(n)

N
X

hRF2(n)

i=1

s(n)
psr(n)

u1(n)

r2(n)

p*sr(-n)

g1(n)

p*sr(-n)

g2(n)

p*sr(-n)

gNc(n)

y(n)

Receiver

uNc(n)

i
i

(n)
a
h (n)

Consider the baseband multi-channel model for a digital communication system shown in Figure 1, where each
of the Nc channels is realized through a separate antenna
element at the receiver. For the model shown in Figure 1,
the sampled version of the transmitted signal is
=

1
X

k=1

b(k )psr (n

kL):

(1)

D );

(2)

psr (n)

(nL):

i (n)

hRF

psr (

n);

In the above development, the frequency response of each

hi (n) is band-limited to the frequency response of p(n) =

psr (n)
psr ( n), which has a raised cosine spectrum with
excess bandwidth parameter . The symbol-spaced channels, hai (n), are the down-sampled versions of the corresponding hi (n)s. Exact equalization for a symbol-spaced
equalizer would then require the gi (n)s to satisfy,

N
X
c

The symbol time interval is designated as T and b(k ) is

a sequence of discrete information-bearing symbols. Associated with each information symbol is the transmitted
waveform psr (n) having a square-root raised cosine spectrum with excess bandwidth parameter . The sampling
interval is Ts = T =L. In equation (1), L is a positive integer which dictates the size of the sampling interval. Note
that Nyquist sampling would require L
2(1 + ) .
The discrete-time channels are modeled as FIR filters
having impulse responses hRFi (n), i = 1; : : : ; Nc , each of
length Nh [3]. The received signal at each antenna element
is corrupted by an additive zero-mean white noise process
ui (n), with ui (n) and uj (n) being uncorrelated when i = j .
The output of each antenna is passed through a matched
filter having an impulse response psr ( n). In turn, the
matched-filter outputs are passed through a bank of FIR
equalizing filters having respective impulse responses gi (n),
i = 1; : : : ; Nc , of length Ng . These outputs are summed
to generate a signal that is sampled at the symbol rate to
generate the symbol decision statistics.

(n) = K (n

Figure 1: Multi-Channel communication model.

s(n)

u2(n)
rNc(n)

where K ( ) is the Kronecker delta function. This relationship implies that only a fixed time delay is imposed on the
transmitted symbol waveform sequence and therefore ISI
is eliminated given that we are using square-root Nyquist
pulses psr ( ) for the symbol waveform.
Due to the fact that we are sampling with L
2(1 +
) , we must down-sample the outputs of the matched filters by L in order to permit symbol-spaced processing for
symbol-spaced equalizer design. Assuming sample-spaced
estimates of the channel impulse responses are available,
symbol-spaced (aliased) channels may be constructed as follows,

Channels
hRFNc(n)

r1(n)

i (n)

hRF

i=1

i (n)

i
g

(n) = K (n

D ):

(3)

2.3. SNR OF THE SYMBOL DECISION STATISTIC

The SNR of the symbol decision statistic can be written in
the following forms for sample-spaced and symbol-spaced
equalization respectively [2]:
E

fjPN

b(k )

jg

(4)

jg

(5)

+ (m) 2

i=1 giH Rvv gi

c

fj PN

b(k )

+ (m) 2

i=1 giH gi
c

In (4) and (5), scales the information symbol and the term
(m) is the residual ISI. Since b(k ) is constant, if we can
constrain 1 and (m) 0 in (4) or (5), then it follows
that minimizing the denominator of (4) or (5) improves the
SNR of the symbol decision statistic.

2.4. OPTIMIZATION FRAMEWORK

In this section and the sections to follow, we will refer to
two well known metrics from system theory. They are the
1 norm and the 2 norm. The book [1], outlines a

rigorous definition and treatment of these norms, the reader

is referred to it for more details.
In line with the comments made in Section 1, we will
deliberately allow errorsPin equalization. To this end, we
Nc HRFi (z )Gi (z) as the equaldefine E (z ) = z D i=1
ization error transfer function
sample-spaced equalizer
PNfor
c H a (z )G (z ) for symboldesign and E (z ) = z D i=1
i
i
spaced design. We will measure the size of E (z ) using its
H1 norm, i.e., the size of the equalization error will simply be the maximum magnitude of the equalization error
frequency response. Constraining kE k1 imposes a bound
on jE (! )j uniformly over frequencies. With these preliminaries, we consider the following optimization problem.
Minimize: f (g1 ; : : : ; gNc ) =
Subject to: kE k1 ";

PNc H
i=1 gi Rvv gi

(6)

with the optimization variables being the coefficients of the

equalizing filter impulse responses.
The above optimization problem will yield a set of equalizing filters with the lowest weighted H2 norm (samplespaced design) or H2 norm (symbol-spaced design) for a
given delay D, equalization error bound ", and equalizer
filter length Ng . We will study the interaction between
these parameters with the MSE of the post-equalized signal constellation and the BER of the symbol decisions as a
measure of performance.
2.5. LMI FORMULATION
The numerical solution of Problem (6) is through convex
optimization based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs).
LMIs are convex constraints requiring an affine combination of symmetric matrices to be positive-definite. LMIbased optimization has come to be recognized as a valuable tool in the numerical solution of problems from system
and control theory. There are effective and powerful algorithms for the solution of LMI optimization problems, i.e.,
algorithms that rapidly compute the global optimum, with
non-heuristic stopping criteria. We refer the reader to the
book [1] and the references therein for details.
The transformation of Problem (6) as an LMI optimization problem requires a suitable state-space description of
the various blocks in our communication system. It turns
out that for the FIR filters in our system, the appropriate
state-space realization (A; B; C; D), is such that A is nilpotent, B is a column vector with a one in the first position,
and the C and D matrices are constructed as follows,

C = [h1 ; : : : ; hNg 1 ];
D = h0 ;

(7)

where fh0 ; h1 ; : : : ; hN 1 g are the impulse response coefficients. Given state-space realizations for Hi (z ), Gi (z ), and
zD of the form shown in (7), it is straightforward to write a
state-space realization for E (z ) with (AE ; BE ; CE ; DE ),

with CE and DE being affine functions of the filter coefficients of g1 (n); : : : ; gNc (n).
From standard results in system theory [1, x2.7.3] the
constraint in Problem (6), i.e., kE (z )k1 ", can be shown
to be equivalent to the LMI, in PE = PH
E,

2 H
3
AE PE AE PE
AH
PE BE
CH
E
E
4 BHE PE AE
BH
E PE BE "2 I DH
E 5 0:
CE
DE
I

(8)
We denote the matrix in (8) as Q(PE ; CE ; DE ).
The objective function, f (g1 ; : : : ; gNc ), in (6) may be
rewritten in a form suitable for LMI optimization as follows. Let gi = [DGi j CGi ]T . By introducing a slack
variable , we can minimize f (g1 ; : : : ; gNc ) by requiring
f (g1 ; : : : ; gNc ) and minimizing . From standard
results in system theory [1, x10.1.1], the constraint
f (g1 ; : : : ; gNc ) can be shown to be equivalent to the LMI,

2
[DG1 j CG1 ]
66 DHG1
R
vv1
66 CHG1
..
..
66
.
64 H.
DGNc
0
CH
G
Nc

..

3
GNc j CGNc ]
7
7
0
7
7
0:
..
7
7
.
7
5
R
vv1

[D

(9)
We will denote the matrix in (9) as F(; CGi ; DGi ). Note
that this same matrix can be used for symbol-spaced design
by replacing Rvv with Ravv and using the equalization error
function defined for symbol-spaced equalizer design.
The matrices F() and Q() are affine functions of PE
and the equalizer filter coefficients. We may now write our
original multi-channel equalizer optimization problem as a
LMI optimization problem.
Minimize:
Subject to: PE

= PH
E
F(; CGi ; DGi ) 0
Q(PE ; CE ; DE ) 0:

(10)

This problem can be very efficiently solved using standard numerical techniques [1]. In this section we developed the design equation for a sample-spaced zero-forcing
equalizer based on LMI optimization. The simulation results in the next section will compare five versions of the
zero-forcing equalizer. These versions are: Sample-Spaced
Minimum-Norm (Sas-ZF-MN), Sample-Spaced LMI (SaSZF-LMI, developed in this section), Sample-Spaced Windowed LMI (SaS-ZF-WLMI), Symbol-Spaced MinimumNorm (SyS-ZF-MN), Symbol-Spaced LMI (SyS-ZF-LMI).
Each of the design methods based on the minimum-norm
solution yield zero-forcing equalizers which achieve exact
equalization, i.e., the equalization error is zero. Whereas
the LMI based designs deliberately allow a non-zero equalization error. The reader should consult [2] for details on
the other design methods not covered in this paper.

RF1

and H

RF2

Equalized Spectrum

Magnitude

1.5

SaSZFMN
SaSZFLMI
SaSZFWLMI

0.5

0
2
Frequency in Hz

10
4

x 10

Equalized Spectrum

SySZFMN
SySZFLMI

1.2
1.1

Magnitude

3. SIMULATION RESULTS
We now compare the five different design methodologies
listed in Section 2.5, using 16-QAM modulation. For each
simulation the symbol rate is 40 KHz, L = 5, i.e., Ts =
5s, the symbol waveform has the square-root raised cosine
spectrum with = 0:35, the sample-spaced channels are
modeled as a three tap FIR filters with unity energy gain and
the symbol-spaced channels are modeled as seven tap FIR
filters. Two channels are used in all simulations (Nc = 2).
For the sample-spaced designs the length of each equalizer
is three and for the symbol-spaced designs each equalizer
has a length of seven. The design parameter D is chosen
such that D = ((Nh +Ng 1)=2), where () is a function
which rounds its argument to the nearest integer. Our results
are summarized in Figures 3, 4, and 5 shown below.

1
0.9
0.8
1.5

0.5

0
Frequency in Hz

0.5

1.5

2
4

x 10

Figure 4: Equalized Spectrums.

Frequency Responses

Magnitude in dB

BER versus SNR, (16QAM)

10

2
4

HRF1
H

10

RF2

8
3

0
Frequency in Hz
a
1

10

3
4

x 10

a
2

H and H Frequency Responses

3

10

BER

Magnitude in dB

0
2
4

H1
a
H2

10

10

8
2

1.5

0.5

0
Frequency in Hz

0.5

1.5

SaSZFMN
SaSZFLMI
SySZFMN
SaSZFWLMI
SySZFLMI

10

x 10

Figure 2: HRF1 , HRF2 , H1a , and H2a Frequency Responses.

10

10
MSE versus

SaSZFMN
SaSZFLMI
SySZFMN
SaSZFWLMI
SySZFLMI

9.5

10

MSE (dB)

15

20

25

30

35

Figure 5: BER Curves for 16-QAM Modulation.

[2] T. F. Settle, M. D. Zoltowski, and V. Balakrishnan.
Design of Multi-Channel Equalizers via Linear Matrix Inequalites: Trade-Off Between SNR and ISI. In
Proc. University of California San Diego Conference
on Wireless Communications with IEEE Communications Society, San Diego, CA., March 1998. Accepted
for publication.

10.5

11

11.5

12

12.5

13

13.5

10

SNR (dB)

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

Figure 3: MSE versus ".

4. REFERENCES
[1] S. Boyd, L. El Ghaoui, E. Feron, and V. Balakrishnan. Linear Matrix Inequalities in System and Control
Theory, volume 15 of Studies in Applied Mathematics.
SIAM, Philadelphia, PA, 1994.

[3] T. A. Thomas and M. D. Zoltowski. Space-Time

Processing for Interference Cancellation and Equalization in Narrowband Digital Communications. In Proc.
IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, pages 160
164, Pheonix, AZ, May 1997.