Blind channel estimation and equalization for multiple FIR channels

This paper deals with the problem of blind equalizations based on effective channel order determination for multiple FIR channels. Most popular order determination methods use the eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) technique with an overmodeled data correlation matrix. However, performing the EVD consumes huge computation resources. In this paper, we consider the channel with infinite small leading and tailing terms which is natural for measured microwave radio channels, and develop a computationally simple method for effective channel order determination. Based on multiple-shift property of a data correlation matrix, a new performance index is analyzed. The channel order is determined if the performance index is greater than a threshold. To select the threshold, we model the performance index as an F-distributed random variable. For a specified confidence level, the threshold can be found from the table. This proposed method does not require EVD, the computation load is much lower than that of the EVD-based methods.