Receiver Concepts for WLAN IEEE 802.

11b
Christof Jonietz† , Wolfgang H. Gerstacker† , and Robert Schober‡
†
Chair of Mobile Communications, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Cauerstrasse 7, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany
Email: {jonietz, gersta}@LNT.de
‡
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Email: rschober@ece.ubc.ca

Abstract
In this paper, complementary code keying (CCK) transmission over frequency–selective fading channels is
investigated. A vector signal model is introduced since CCK can be interpreted as a block code. Based on pairwise
error probabilities we derive a performance approximation for optimum detection obtained for given channel
statistics, and compare the theoretical results with simulations. Because optimum maximum–likelihood sequence
estimation (MLSE) is not practical for large channel delay spreads, minimum mean–squared error decision–feedback
equalization (MMSE–DFE) is employed. Two different DFE approaches are considered here: (a) the conventional
scalar DFE and (b) a block–based DFE, which is well suited for the underlying vector signal model. For various
common indoor channel profiles, numerical results are given for MLSE, scalar DFE and block DFE in terms of bit
error rates (BERs) and packet error rates (PERs).

1 Introduction In this paper, MLSE and DFE schemes tailored for

In the last few years, the increase in digital wireless
and mobile communications as well as internet users
has been tremendous. High–rate standards for indoor
use with up to 11 Mbit/s have been developed by
the IEEE 802.11b committee for wireless local area
networks (WLANs). Currently, IEEE 802.11b is the
most widespread WLAN standard in practical applica-
tions and operates in the 2.4 GHz Industrial–Scientific–
Medical (ISM) band. Four transmission modes have
been specified for 802.11b with data rates of 1, 2,
5.5, and 11 Mbit/s, respectively. For the 1 and 2
Mbit/s modes direct–sequence spread spectrum (DS–
SS) using an 11 chip Barker sequence is employed.
For the higher transmission rates complementary code
keying (CCK) and packet binary convolutional coding
[1] have been adopted. In this paper, CCK is considered
since it is extensively implemented in today’s WLAN
IEEE 802.11b terminals. CCK is a variation of M –
ary orthogonal keying modulation with complex–valued
chips in each word. 5.5 and 11 Mbit/s are supported.
In a rich scattering environment, e.g. an indoor office
environment or dense built outdoor areas, multipath
propagation leads to intersymbol interference (ISI),
and an equalizer is mandatory for high performance.
There are three common equalization approaches: lin-
ear equalization (LE), decision–feedback equalization
(DFE), and maximum–likelihood sequence estimation
(MLSE) [2]. MLSE yields optimum performance at a
high computational complexity. LE is much simpler to
implement but may suffer from a significant perfor-
mance loss compared to MLSE. DFE often offers a
good trade–off between performance and complexity.
CCK modulation are proposed. An approximation for
the error probability of MLSE is developed and verified
by simulations. It is shown that the performance of DFE
is close to that of MLSE for many relevant scenarios.
Alternative equalization schemes for WLANs can
be found in [3], [4], [5]. In [3], the performance
of an enhanced RAKE receiver for indoor multi-
path WLAN IEEE 802.11b applications using direct–
sequence spread spectrum signals is examined. A
decision–feedback structure is embedded in the channel
matched filter and codeword correlator. Simulation re-
sults in [3] show, however, that this approach leads to a
worse performance than a pure DFE approach. In [4],
a constrained RAKE receiver (designed to cope with
a certain maximum excess delay) is proposed for the
extension of WLAN IEEE 802.11b to outdoor cellular
environments. However, RAKE receivers suffer in prin-
ciple from an error floor for CCK transmission due to
the nonorthogonality of the code words. Hence, for high
performance the RAKE principle should be avoided
for receivers designed for WLAN IEEE 802.11b. An
approach to jointly suppress co–channel interference
and ISI is presented in [5]. Unfortunately, this method
requires a modification of the transmitter and is not
compatible with the current IEEE 802.11b standard.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. An
introduction to CCK modulation is given in Section 2.
A chip–based and a symbol–based system model for
CCK transmission are established in Section 3. Section
4 introduces receiver concepts for CCK transmission
for optimum and suboptimum detection. Additionally,
a performance approximation is derived for optimum
 TABLE I
detection. Simulation results are given in Section 5,
M APPING OF DIBIT PATTERNS ONTO PHASES
which show the tightness of the derived performance
approximation for optimum detection and demonstrate Dibit pattern Phase ϕν+1
the good performance of the proposed suboptimum {d2ν , d2ν+1 }
detection algorithms. Section 6 concludes the paper. 00 0
01 π/2
10 π
2 Complementary Code Keying 11 3π/2
Complementary codes have been originally proposed
by Golay for infrared multislit spectroscopy in [6],
where pairs of complementary binary code words have even chip phases, ϕ2 in the first and third pair of chip
been given. Based on Golay’s work, Tseng and Liu dis- phases, and ϕ3 in the first quadruple of chip phases.
cussed sets of complementary sequences in [7]. Later, The fourth and seventh chips are rotated by 180 ◦ ,
Siviswamy [8] and Frank [9] generalized the concept respectively, by a cover sequence in order to optimize
and considered polyphase (multiphase) complementary the sequence correlation properties and to minimize the
codes and their construction. Complementary code DC offset in the code words [1] (cf. the minus signs in
words are basically characterized by the property that the second line of Eq. (1)).
the sum of the autocorrelation sequences of both words The phases ϕ0 , ϕ1 , ϕ2 , and ϕ3 are determined by
is zero everywhere except for zero shift [8]. the dibits {d0 , d1 }, {d2 , d3 }, {d4 , d5 }, and {d6 , d7 },
In wireless communications, multipath propagation respectively, as specified in Table I.
causes multiple echoes of the same transmitted signal
and propagation paths of different lengths cause ISI
at the receiver. The special properties of complemen- 3 Transmission Model
tary codes make them suitable for wireless communi-
cations in frequency–selective environments. In [10], 3.1 Chip–Based Model
it has been shown that a high power efficiency can
be obtained for ISI channels using CCK signals for First, we consider a chip–based model for CCK trans-
transmission. mission over frequency–selective channels. Simplified
block diagrams of the continuous–time and discrete–
The data bits are encoded differently in the 5.5 and time transmission models in equivalent complex base-
11 Mbit/s modes. For 5.5 Mbit/s, 4 information bits are band representation are shown in Figs. 1a and 1b,
mapped onto one code word, whereas for 11 Mbit/s 8 respectively.
bits correspond to one code word. The CCK encoder maps the input data words d[k] to
In this paper, only the 11 Mbit/s mode is considered, code words c[k] (k: time index at code word level). The
since it is most relevant for high–rate applications. In channel impulse response (CIR) between transmit and
this case, the binary input data sequence is partitioned receive antenna is denoted by hC (t). Assuming a block
into vectors of length 8, d = [d0 . . . d7 ]T ∈ {0, 1}8 , fading channel (random impulse response, varying from
where [·]T refers to transposition of a vector. The packet to packet, but being constant within each packet)
complex–valued code words c are chosen from set C with L discrete paths,
with cardinality |C| = 28 = 256 according to the rule
L−1
X
[1]:
hC (t) = gp δ(t − τp ) (3)
c = [ c0 c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 c6 c7 ]T (1) p=0
jΘ0 jΘ1 jΘ2 jΘ3 jΘ4 jΘ5 jΘ6 jΘ7 T
=[ e e e −e e e −e e ] . is valid, where gp is the random complex Gaussian
Hence, each code word c is composed of 8 complex– weight of path p with mean g p = E{gp } and variance
2
valued chips, where c0 is transmitted first in time. The σg,p = E{|gp − g p |2 }, and τp and δ(·) denote the
phases of the 8 chips are determined according to corresponding path delay and the Dirac impulse, re-
    spectively. E{·} refers to expectation. The transmit and
Θ0 1 1 1 1
 Θ1   1 0 1 1  receiver input filters adopted for the numerical results
     have both square–root raised cosine frequency response
 Θ2   1 1 0 1  ϕ0
    with roll–off factor 0.3, respectively. The overall CIR
 Θ3   1 0 0 1   ϕ1 
     is given by
 Θ4  =  1 1 1 0   ϕ2  (2)
   
 Θ5   1 0 1 0  ϕ3 L−1
X
   
 Θ6   1 1 0 0  h(t) = hT (t) ∗ hC (t) ∗ hR (t) = gp hG (t − τp ), (4)
Θ7 1 0 0 0 p=0

Note, that ϕ0 is contained in all chip phases and simply where hT (t) and hR (t) denote the transmit and re-
rotates the whole code word c. ϕ1 is contained in all ceiver input filter impulse responses, respectively, and
 n(t)
a)
dF [·] CCK cF [·] r[µ]
hT (t) hC (t) hR (t)
encoder t=µT

n[µ]
b)
dF [·] CCK cF [·] r[µ]
h[l]
encoder

n[k]
c)
d[k] CCK c[k] r[k] ML ĉ[k] CCK d̂[k]
H s [m] demapper
encoder detector

Fig. 1. Block diagrams of a) the continuous–time, b) the chip–based discrete-time, and c) the symbol–based discrete–time equivalent baseband
transmission model.

hG (t) = hT (t) ∗ hR (t) (∗: convolution). The received (vector) sequence,

signal can be written as q̃h
X
8K r[k] = H s [m] c[k − m] + n[k], (8)
X
m=0
r(t) = cF [µ]h(t − µTc ) + hR (t) ∗ n(t) (5)
µ=1 where H s [m] are the overall 8 × 8 CIR coefficient
matrices, which are specified below. q̃h denotes the
(Tc : chip interval), where order of the matrix filter, q̃h = ⌈qh /8⌉ (⌈x⌉: smallest
n o integer ≥ x), and specifies the number of past code
cF [·] = c0 [1], c1 [1], c2 [1], . . . , c5 [K], c6 [K], c7 [K] (6) words which affect the current received word (inter–
code–word interference (ICI)). The matrix–valued taps
denotes the transmit sequence of an entire packet H s [m] can be determined from the 8(q̃h +1)×8 matrix
(frame) consisting of K successive code words c[k] H ′s as follows:
with chips cν [k], ν ∈ {0, 1, . . . , 7}. The sequence  
dF [·] corresponding to an entire packet of information H s [0]
bits is defined similar to Eq. (6). With µ, 1 ≤ µ ≤ 8K,  H s [1] 
 
H ′s =  .. , (9)
a chip inside a particular code word within a packet  . 
is addressed. n(t) is additive white Gaussian noise H s [q̃h ]
(AWGN) with single–sided power spectral density N0 .
After Tc –spaced sampling the discrete–time received where H ′s is a Toeplitz matrix and defined as
signal is given by H ′s = [h′0 . . . h′7 ]. (10)
qh
X Each column vector h′ν
contains the overall CIR h[l],
r[µ] = r(µTc ) = h[l] cF [µ − l] + n[µ], (7) h iT
l=0 h′ν = 0Tν h[0] . . . h[qh ] 0T8 (q̃h +1)−(qh +1)−ν , (11)
with the discrete–time overall CIR h[l] = h(lTc ), l ∈ and 0ν is the zero column vector of length ν.
{0, 1, . . . , qh } (qh : order of discrete–time CIR). Note
that n[µ] is a discrete–time AWGN process.
4 Receivers
3.2 Symbol–Based Model1
4.1 MLSE
A symbol–based model, which is more suitable for In the following, we consider optimum maximum–
block–coded transmission, is now derived from the
likelihood decoding for continuous transmission of
chip–based model. Instead of single chips, received CCK code words over ISI channels. The block diagram
vectors r[k] corresponding to transmitted code words is shown in Fig. 1c. Assuming that the channel impulse
are considered. The block diagram of this model is
response H s [·] is perfectly known at the receiver and
shown in Fig. 1c. n[k] is a zero–mean white complex Gaussian vector
The received word r[k] can be written as the con- process with components of variance σn2 , the proba-
volution of a finite impulse response (FIR) matrix bility density function (pdf) of r[k] conditioned on a
filter impulse response and the transmitted code word hypotheses e r[k] for the noiseless received vector is
 
1 In this paper, the terms ”symbol” and ”code word” are inter- 1 || r[k] − er [k] ||2
r[k]) =
p(r[k] | e exp − (12)
changeable. (πσn2 )8 σn2
 Hyper–branch:
P parallel branches
between two states
S1
TABLE II
N UMBER OF TRELLIS STATES NS AND PARALLEL BRANCHES P
FOR A GIVEN CHANNEL MEMORY qh .

Channel Number of Number of parallel

S2
Memory qh states NS branches P
0 1 256
S3 1 4 64
2 16 16
3, 4 64 4
5, 6, 7, 8 256 1
SNS
k k+1
Another possibility for trellis–based equalization of
Fig. 2. Trellis diagram for one time step.
CCK signals is suggested in [11], where a Path Re-
stricted MLSE (PR-MLSE) for CCK transmission is
proposed. There, trellis states are defined for each chip
(|| · ||: L2 –norm of a vector), where er [k] is related to instead of each symbol. Within this trellis, only the
the code word hypotheses e c[·] according to transition paths permitted by the CCK encoding law
q̃h
X are considered for survivor selection.
r [k] =
e H s [m] e
c[k − m]. (13)
m=0 4.2 Performance Approximation for MLSE
The (optimum) maximum–likelihood decision rule for In the following, the achievable performance of an
forming an estimate ĉ[·] for the sequence c[·] is MLSE receiver for CCK transmission over fading ISI
(K ) channels is investigated. Based on the results in [12]
X  2
 for transmission of space–time block codes over ISI
ĉ[·] = argmin e[k]  .
r[k] − r (14)
e
c[·] channels, we derive the pairwise error probability (PEP)
k=1
for CCK transmission. Furthermore, we give an ap-
A corresponding NS –state trellis diagram for the proximation for the bit error rate (BER) for MLSE.
Viterbi algorithm for recursive minimization of the right Similar to [12] we consider the transmission of a
hand side in Eq. (14) is given in Fig. 2. The trellis states single code word. The derived result for PEP is a
S n , 1 ≤ n ≤ NS , depend on the channel memory qh lower bound for continuous transmission of code words,
which determines the number of chips from past code because previous and subsequent code words are not
words affecting the current code word. The states are taken into account [12]. Nevertheless, simulation results
defined as for MLSE for continuous transmission presented in
 Section 5 will demonstrate the tightness of the derived
S n [k] = c7 [k−1] . . . c0 [k−1] . . . c7 [k− q̃h ] . . . performance approximation.

. . . c7−(l−1) [k− q̃h ] , (15) For a single code word c we obtain the received
vector
with l = mod8 (qh ) (mod8 (·): remainder after division
with 8). Note that the last qh chips of the last qeh code r = C mh + n (16)
words determine the states S n . with r = [r[0] . . . r[7 + qh ]]T , h = [h[0] . . . h[qh ]]T
For simplicity, we restrict ourselves to qh ≤ 8 in and the noise vector n defined similarly as r. The
the remainder of this subsection, i.e., ICI occurs only modified (8 + qh ) × (qh + 1) code matrix is given by
between adjacent code words. Regarding the encoding
law in Eqs. (1) and (2), we observe that, when tracing C m = [cm,0 . . . cm,qh ] (17)
back the channel shift register, ϕ0 appears first in c7 2 , with
ϕ1 appears first in c6 , ϕ2 appears first in c5 , and
ϕ3 appears first in c3 . Therefore, P parallel branches cm,l = [0Tl cT 0Tqh −l ]T . (18)
merge from each state to any allowed next state, which We assume again, that the channel vector h is perfectly
are subsumed in one hyper–branch in Fig. 2. Each known at the receiver. The pdf of r conditioned on
branch within one hyper–branch represents one code hypothesis e
c is
word. The number of parallel branches depends on the ( )
number of states NS with P = 256/NS . The number of 1 e m h||2
||r − C
p(r|e
c) = exp − , (19)
trellis states and the number of parallel transitions are (πσn2 )8+qh σn2
summarized in Table II for channel memories qh ≤ 8.
e m is defined similarly to C m .
cf. Eq. (12), where C
2 Recall that c0 is sent first in time. The maximum–likelihood decision rule for forming an
estimate ĉ for c is and 0 ≤ ξ ≤ 1, e.g. ξ = 0.995. The dominant pairs can
n o be easily obtained using an upper bound for the PEP.
e m h||2 .
ĉ = argmin ||r − C (20)
Since Φ∆(α,β) (s) is known, a simple upper bound takes
e
c
the form [12]

4.2.1 Pairwise Error Probability Pe (α, β) ≤ Φ∆(α,β) (γ0 ), (27)

The PEP Pe (α, β) is the probability that a code word where γ0 has to fulfill γ0 < ℜ{s1 }. γ0 = 10−3 is
c = cα is transmitted and the maximum–likelihood typically a good choice. The relevant pairs of (α, β)
receiver decides in favour of ĉ = cβ (cα , cβ ∈ C, α 6= are then determined by comparing the corresponding
β). According to [12] values of Φ∆(α,β) (γ0 ).
2 2
Pe (α, β) = Pr{||r − C α β
m h|| > ||r − C m h|| } 4.3 Decision–Feedback Equalization
= Pr{ ∆(α, β) < 0 }, (21) Because the complexity of MLSE seems to be too high
where Cα and C βm
are defined similarly to Eq. (17). for a practical implementation, suboptimum receiver
m
Thus, the PEP can be reduced to the probability that concepts for CCK modulation are required. In [14],
a random variable ∆(α, β), which depends on the combined equalization and decoding of CCK signals
mean and the autocorrelation matrix of h (see [12] for based on the Fano sequential decoding algorithm has
details), with pdf p∆(α,β) (x) takes on a negative value been proposed, and it has been shown that such a
[13] sequential decoder performs close to the optimum
receiver for certain scenarios. However, the compu-
Z0 tational load of a sequential decoder is a random
Pe (α, β) = p∆(α,β)(x) dx. (22) variable which might be a drawback if regularity is
x=−∞ required in an implementation. Therefore, alternative
In order to evaluate the PEP, the Laplace transform low–complexity concepts are of interest.
Φ∆(α,β) (s) of the pdf p∆(α,β) may be used, which is In the following, combined equalization and decod-
given in [12] in closed form. Then, the PEP for an ing of CCK signals based on feedback of previous
arbitrary code word pair can be determined as decisions is investigated. Because block–coded signals
are transmitted, decision feedback has to be done at
Z ∞
γ+j
block level, i.e., block decision–feedback equalization
1 ds
P (α, β) = Φ∆(α,β) (s) (23) (DFE) [15], [16] is applied. For the simplest version of
2πj s
γ−j ∞ a block DFE, the decision rule is given by [15]
n
for 0 < γ < ℜ{s1 }, where s1 denotes that pole of 
ĉ[k] = argmin r[k] − H s [0] c̃[k]
Φ∆(α,β) (s) which has minimum positive real part (ℜ{·} e
c[k]
is the real part operator). We evaluate Eq. (23) numer- )
Xq̃h 2
ically based on Gauss–Chebyshev quadrature rules as 
− H s [m] ĉ[k − m] ,
described in [12]. m=1
(28)
4.2.2 Approximation of the Bit Error Rate where ĉ[k−1], . . . , ĉ[k− q̃h ] denote previously decided
code words.
Based on the PEP, the Union Bound on the average bit The performance of a block DFE can be improved
error rate Pb is given by if an FIR matrix feedforward (FF) filter with impulse
|C| |C| response F [m] is introduced in order to concentrate
1 X X n(α, β)
Pb ≤ · Pe (α, β), (24) the energy of the overall response in the first matrix
|C| α=1 8
β=1 tap, cf. Fig. 3. In the feedback (FB) section, the
β 6= α
postcursor ISI corresponding to the overall forward
where n(α, β) denotes the number of bit errors if cα impulse response is subtracted using a FB filter with
is transmitted and cβ is detected. coefficient matrices B[m]. The FF and the FB filter
In order to avoid the computation of the PEP for all may be jointly optimized according to the minimum
possible pairs of (α, β), only those (dominant) pairs mean–squared error (MMSE) criterion, cf. [17]. For
of (α, β) are considered for evaluation of Eq. (24), for this, the autocorrelation matrix of the code words is
which required, which is given by a scaled 8 × 8 identity
matrix because the chips of a code word c are mutually
Pe (α, β) ≥ ξ · Pe,max (25) uncorrelated.
is true, where For sufficiently high signal–to–noise ratios (SNRs)
n o and FIR filter orders, the MMSE solution tends to the
Pe,max = max Pe (α, β) (26) zero–forcing (ZF) solution. The transfer function (z–
(α,β)
(α6=β) transform of impulse response) of the ZF–DFE FF filter
 n[k]

d[k] CCK c[k] r[k] symbol ĉ[k] CCK d̂[k]

H s [m] F [m] W demapper
encoder decision

B[m]

Fig. 3. Block diagram of the symbol–based DFE.

reads [18]
F (z) = H −1 −1
s,min [0] H s,min (z) H s (z).
Here, H s,min (z) is the minimum–phase equivalent of
the transfer matrix H s (z), with
HH ∗ H ∗
s (1/z ) H s (z) = H s,min (1/z ) H s,min (z) (30)
((·)H : Hermitian transposition), and det(H s,min (z))
(det(·): determinant of a matrix) has roots only inside
the unit circle. Furthermore, similar to the scalar case,
H s,min [·] is characterized by a better energy concen-
tration in the front part than H s [·] [18],
k
X k
X case the additional 8 × 8 whitening matrix W (dashed
kH s,min [κ]k2F ≥ kH s [κ]k2F , 0 ≤ k ≤ q̃h
κ=0 κ=0
(31)
(k·kF : Frobenius norm of a matrix).
Because of the special structure of H s (z)
(cf. Eqs. (9), (10)), it turns out that the coefficient
matrices of the minimum–phase equivalent can be
determined (up to an arbitrary unitary matrix factor)
from an 8 (q̃h + 1) × 8 matrix H ′s,min as follows:
 
H s,min [0]
 H s,min [1] 
 
H ′s,min =  .. , (32)
 .  proximation for MLSE is compared with simula-
H s,min [q̃h ]
where, similar to Eq. (9), H ′s,min is defined as the
Toeplitz matrix
H ′s,min = [h′0,min . . . h′7,min ]
which is composed of column vectors contain- h′ν,min
ing the scalar minimum–phase equivalent hmin [·] of
the scalar channel impulse response h[·],
h Fig. 4 shows the BER and packet error rate (PER)
h′ν,min = 0Tν hmin [0]
iT
. . . hmin [qh ] 0T8 (q̃h +1)−(qh +1)−ν
. good agreement of the simulated BER with the derived
(34)
It can be easily checked that the resulting impulse
response fulfills Eqs. (30) and (31). For transforming
H s (z) into H s,min (z) via FF filtering, block pro-
cessing is not necessary in this special case. Instead,
filtering the received sequence first at chip level with
an allpass filter F (z) = Hmin (z)/H(z) and then
collecting the filtered chip sequence in words suffices.
Here, Hmin (z) and H(z) denote the z–transforms of
hmin [·] and h[·], respectively.
(29) Hence, for high SNRs the application of an MMSE
matrix FF filter at symbol level is equivalent to op-
timum FF filtering at chip level. On the other hand,
for low–to–moderate SNRs the MMSE matrix FF fil-
ter yields a somewhat better performance than scalar
MMSE FF processing, cf. Section 5. FF filtering at
chip level and subsequent collection of chips in words
can be also described by Fig. 3, where the FF filter
matrices F [m] can be obtained similarly to H s,min [m]
(Eqs. (32), (33)) from the scalar FF filter coefficients
f [0], . . . , f [qf ] (qf : FF filter order). Note that in this
part in Fig. 3) is not necessary because the components
of the error vector of the DFE are uncorrelated. On the
other hand, if the optimum matrix DFE filters according
to [17] are chosen, the chips of the error vector are
correlated, and spatial whitening is necessary if the
Euclidean metric is applied for forming code word
decisions3 . For high SNRs, W = H s,min [0] results.
5 Numerical Results
For three test channels, the derived performance ap-
tions. We consider the AWGN channel, a test channel
(ProB ) with fixed channel impulse response h[·] =
{0.407, 0.815, 0.407} [2], and a stochastic test channel
(3TAP ) with 3 taps. The amplitudes of the 3TAP
(33) channel are Rayleigh distributed with equal variances.
The taps of the ProB and 3TAP channels are Tc –spaced
(Tc = 90.9 ns). For these channels, memories of qh = 2
(corresponding to 16 trellis states and 16 branches per
hyper–branch) result, respectively.
versus Eb /N0 (Eb : received energy per bit), respec-
tively. One packet consists of K = 1000 code words. A
performance approximation for MLSE can be observed
at moderate Eb /N0 already. For high Eb /N0 both
curves are identical. Hence, the derived performance
approximation is an efficient tool to estimate the BER
of MLSE.
3 The reason for this is that a standard (optimum) block DFE results
in a reference tap close to the identity matrix. Therefore, correlations
of the chips of the error vector cannot be avoided.
 0 0
10 10

−1
10

−2
10
−1
10

−3
10
BER →

PER →
−4
10

−2
10
−5
10

−6
10
MLSE, AWGN MLSE AWGN
MLSE, 3TAP MLSE 3TAP
−7
MLSE, ProB −3
MLSE ProB
10 10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
10⋅log10(Eb/N0) [dB] → 10⋅log10(Eb/N0) [dB] →
a) b)

Fig. 4. a) BER and b) PER versus Eb /N0 for MLSE (solid lines) and the derived performance approximation for MLSE (dashed lines). ’◦’:
AWGN channel, ’+’: 3TAP channel, ’△’: ProB channel.

0 0
10 10

−1
10

−2
10
−1
10

−3
10
BER →

PER →

−4
10

−2
10
−5
10

−6 Office A, scalar DFE Office A, scalar DFE

10
Office A, block DFE Office A, block DFE
Residential C, scalar DFE Residential C, scalar DFE
−7
Residential C, block DFE −3
Residential C, block DFE
10 10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
10⋅log10(Eb/N0) [dB] → 10⋅log10(Eb/N0) [dB] →
a) b)

Fig. 5. a) BER and b) PER versus Eb /N0 for DFE (solid lines) with scalar and matrix FF filter and the derived performance approximation
for MLSE (dashed lines). ’◦’: Office A channel and scalar FF filter, ’+’: Office A channel and matrix FF filter, ’△’: Residential C channel and
scalar FF filter, ’×’: Residential C channel and matrix FF filter.

TABLE III
(JTC) to characterize indoor radio environments [19].
JTC C HANNEL PROFILES : O FFICE A AND R ESIDENTIAL C
Three channel profiles (A, B, C) for each of three
different propagation environments (office, residential,
Channel Channel
Office A Residential C and commercial area) are standardized. The JTC pro-
files Office A and Residential C are depicted in Table
Excess Rel. Excess Rel.
Tap Delay Att. Delay Att. III (delay and relative attenuation (Rel. Att.) of each
(ns) (dB) (ns) (dB) path). Regarding the large excess delays of the JTC
1 0 0 0 -4.6 channels and multipath spacings unequal to multiples
2 50 -3.6 50 0 of Tc , simulations for MLSE are not feasible. However,
3 100 -7.2 150 -4.3
in addition to DFE with both FF filtering approaches,
4 225 -6.5
5 400 -3.0 the proposed performance approximation for MLSE is
6 525 -15.2 also shown in Fig. 5.
7 750 -21.7 For low–to–moderate Eb /N0 the matrix FF filter at
symbol level yields a slightly better performance than
scalar MMSE FF filtering. As expected, at high Eb /N0
The performance of DFE with scalar and matrix both DFE schemes achieve the same performance, since
FF filter, respectively, is compared in Fig. 5. Here, the MMSE matrix FF filter is equivalent to optimum FF
the comparison is based on multipath Rayleigh fading filtering at chip level in this case, cf. Section 4.3.
models developed by the Joint Technical Committee
6 Conclusions [17] N. Al-Dhahir and A.H. Sayed. The Finite-Length Multi-Input
Multi-Output MMSE-DFE. IEEE Trans. Signal Processing,
48:2921–2936, October 2000.
In this paper, the performance of various receiver [18] W.H. Gerstacker and D.P. Taylor. On Prefiltering for Reduced–
concepts for complementary code keying (CCK) trans- State Equalization of MIMO Channels. Accepted for ITG
mission over ISI channels has been investigated. Inter- Conference on Source and Channel Coding, Erlangen, 2004.
[19] Joint Technical Comittee on Wireless Access. Final Report on
preting CCK as a block code, a performance approxi- RF Channel Characterization, Sept. 1994.
mation for optimum MLSE is derived and validated by
simulations. Furthermore, MMSE–DFE with optimum
scalar and matrix feedforward filters, respectively, is
proposed. Our results show, that the performance for
matrix filtering is slightly better than that for scalar
filtering at low–to–moderate SNRs, whereas both ap-
proaches are equivalent at high SNRs.

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