MIMO-OFDM equaliser for spatial multiplexing transmission modes

In search for faster and more reliable communication, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) in conjuction with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) are subject of extensive research. In spatial multiplexing transmission an instantaneous rise of data rates governed by the number of transmit antennas can be realised. The system performance depends highly on signal-to-interference-plus noise ratios (SINR) at the receiver. The receiver's equaliser is supposed to maximize the SINR by mitigating the spatial interference and thus separating the transmitted signals. For this problem several solutions exist such as linear and nonlinear, per subcarrier or OFDM symbol-based. An overview of common algorithms is given and complexity is discussed. Bit error rate (BER) performance evaluations are presented. Another aspect is the impact of the equalisation strategy on the performance of bit-interleaved soft information-based channel coding schemes. As a representative, LDPC codes are chosen. Simulation results show a significant BER performance loss for symbol decision-based equalisers compared to the uncoded performance. To overcome this problem a modification of the Maximum Likelihood algorithm is proposed which yields good performance for low SNR applications.