Turbo equalization for GMSK signaling over multipath channels based on the Gibbs sampler

We consider the problem of Bayesian data restoration for Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK) signals over unknown multipath channels. As an alternative to the linear approximation method employed in the conventional finite impulse response (FIR) model, we develop a nonlinear signal model for this system. A Bayesian equalizer based on the Gibbs sampler, a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) procedure, is developed for estimating the a posteriori symbol probability in the GMSK system without explicit channel estimation. The basic idea of this technique is to generate ergodic random samples from the joint posterior distribution of all unknowns, and then to average the appropriate samples to obtain the estimates of the unknown quantities. Being soft-input soft-output in nature, the proposed Bayesian equalization technique is well suited for iterative processing in a coded system, which allows the Bayesian equalizer to successively refine its processing based on the information from the decoding stage, and vice versa.