A Per-Survivor Processing Receiver for MIMO Transmission Systems With One Unknown Channel Order Per Output

The order of a communications channel is the length of its impulse response. Recently, several works have tackled the problem of estimating the order of a frequency-selective multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) channel. However, all of them consider a single order, despite the fact that a MIMO channel comprises several subchannels (specifically, as many as the number of inputs times the number of outputs), each one possibly with its own order. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm for maximum-likelihood sequence detection (MLSD) in frequency-and time-selective MIMO channels that incorporates full estimation of the MIMO channel impulse response (CIR) coefficients, including one channel order per output. Simulation results following the analytical derivation of the algorithm suggest that the proposed receiver can achieve significant improvements in performance when transmitting through a MIMO channel that effectively comprises subchannels of different lengths.