Frequency-Domain Block Signal Detection for Single-Carrier Transmission

One-tap frequency-domain equalization (FDE) based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion 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 inter-symbol interference (ISI) after MMSE-FDE. In this paper, we point out that the frequency-domain received SC signal can be expressed using the matrix representation similar to the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiplexing and therefore, signal detection schemes developed for MIMO multiplexing, other than simple one-tap MMSE-FDE, can be applied to SC transmission. Then, for the reception of SC signals, we propose a new signal detection scheme, which combines FDE with MIMO signal detection, such as MMSE detection and Vertical-Bell Laboratories layered space-time architecture (V-BLAST) detection (we call this frequency-domain block signal detection). The achievable average BER performance using the proposed frequency-domain block signal detection is evaluated by computer simulation.