The impact of intersymbol interference (ISI) on single carrier frequency domain equalization with multiple input multiple output (MIMO-SCFDE) systems is severe. Most existing channel equalization methods fail to solve it completely. In this paper, given the disadvantages of the error propagation and the gap from matched filter bound (MFB), we creatively introduce a decision feedback equalizer with frequency-domain bidirectional noise prediction (DFE-FDBiNP) to tackle intersymbol interference (ISI) in MIMO-SCFDE systems. The equalizer has two-part equalizer, that is the normal mode and the time-reversal mode decision feedback equalization with noise prediction (DFE-NP). Equal-gain combining is used to realize a greatly simplified and low complexity diversity combining. Analysis and simulation results validate the improved performance of the proposed method in quasi-static frequency-selective fading MIMO channel for a typical urban environment.

There are often low contrast Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) objects in the MTB images. Based on improved histogram equalization (HE), a framework of contrast enhancement is proposed to increase the contrast of MTB images. Our proposed algorithm was compared with the traditional HE and the weighted thresholded HE. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm has better performance in contrast enhancement, artifacts suppression, and brightness preserving for MTB images.

Single-carrier (SC) transmission with space-time block coded (STBC) transmit diversity can achieve good bit error rate (BER) performance. However, in a high mobility environment, the STBC codeword orthogonality is distorted and as consequence, the BER performance is degraded by the interference caused by the orthogonality distortion of STBC codeword. In this paper, we proposed a novel frequency-domain equalization (FDE) for SC-STBC transmit diversity in doubly selective fading channel. Multiple FDE weight matrices, each associated with a different code block, are jointly optimized based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion taking into account not only channel frequency variation but also channel time variation over the STBC codeword. Computer simulations confirm that the proposed robust FDE achieves BER performance superior to conventional FDE, which was designed based on the assumption of a quasi-static fading.

In this letter, we propose a blind adaptive algorithm for joint compensation of inter-block interference (IBI) and frequency-dependent IQ imbalance using a single time-domain equalizer. We combine the MERRY algorithm for IBI suppression with the differential constant modulus algorithm to compensate for IQ imbalance. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is shown through computer simulations.

Amplify-and-forward (AF) relay multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems can achieve high data rate and high quality communications. On the other hand, it has to estimate all channels between the source-relay and relay-destination nodes in the destination node. In MIMO/OFDM systems, high time resolution carrier interferometry (HTRCI) has been proposed to achieve an accurate channel estimation (CE) with a small number of pilot signals. However, since it has many interferences, an accurate CE is not obtained and the system performance is degraded in AF relay MIMO/OFDM systems. Therefore, in this paper, we propose the complex HTRCI (C-HTRCI) pilot signal and the enhanced minimum mean square error (E-MMSE) equalization to achieve an accurate CE and to improve the system performance for AF relay MIMO/OFDM systems.

In this paper, we study a distributed time-reversal space-time block coded single-carrier (D-TR-STBC-SC) system for amplify-and-forward (AF) half-duplex relaying in frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels. Under the imperfect channel estimation condition, we analyze the mean-square-error (MSE) performance of the optimal and channel-mismatched frequency domain minimum MSE (FD-MMSE) and least square (LS) equalization. Our analysis results show that, unlike the point-to-point communications, the channel-mismatched FD-MMSE equalization of D-TR-STBC-SC relaying network leads to the ceiling effect that the MSE increases as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of relay-to-destination link increases. Decomposing the MSE, it is found that the primary cause of the ceiling effect is the source-to-destination link in the first time-slot, which makes the covariance matrix of noise vector ill-conditioned. In order to resolve the channel-mismatching problems in the equalization process, we develop optimum relay power control strategies by considering practical channel estimations, i.e., training-based LS and linear minimum MSE (LMMSE) channel estimations. It is shown that the optimum power control resolves the trade-off between MSE performance and relay power consumption, and improves the robustness against the channel-mismatching. Finally, we introduce a performance evaluation to demonstrate the performance of channel equalization combined with the proposed power controls in D-TR-STBC-SC relaying network.

In this paper, we propose a transmit multi-block frequency-domain equalization (MB-FDE) for frequency-domain space-time block coded joint transmit/receive diversity (FD-STBC-JTRD). Noting that a STBC codeword consists of multiple coded blocks, the transmit MB-FDE uses the multiple transmit FDE weight matrices, each associated with each coded block. Both single-carrier (SC) transmission and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission are considered. For SC transmission, the transmit MB-FDE weight matrices are jointly optimized so as to minimize the mean square error (MSE) between the transmit signal before STBC encoding and the received signal after STBC decoding. For OFDM transmission, they are jointly optimized so as to maximize the received signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) after STBC decoding. We show by theoretical analysis that the proposed transmit MB-FDE can achieve 1/RSTBC times higher received SNR than the conventional transmit single-block FDE (SB-FDE), where RSTBC represents the code rate of STBC. It is confirmed by computer simulation that, when more than 2 receive antennas are used, MB-FDE can always achieve better BER performance than SB-FDE irrespective of the number of transmit antennas, and the channel frequency-selectivity.

Track mis-registration (TMR) is one of the major problems in high-density magnetic recording systems such as bit-patterned media recording (BPMR). In general, TMR results from the misalignment between the center of the read head and that of the main track, which can deteriorate the system performance. Although TMR can be handled by a servo system, this paper proposes a novel method to alleviate the TMR effect, based on the readback signal. Specifically, the readback signal is directly used to estimate a TMR level and is then further processed by the suitable target and equalizer designed for such a TMR level. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method can sufficiently estimate the TMR level and then helps improve the system performance if compared to the conventional receiver that does not employ a TMR mitigation method, especially when an areal density is high and/or a TMR level is large.

In this letter, we propose a novel Uniformity-Approximated Histogram Equalization (UAHE) algorithm to enhance the image as well as to preserve the image features. First, the UAHE algorithm generates the image histogram and computes the average value of all bins as the histogram threshold. In order to approximate the uniform histogram, the bins of image histograms greater than the above threshold are clipped, and the subtracted counts are averaged and uniformly assigned to the remaining bins lower than the threshold. The approximated uniform histogram is then applied to generate the intensity transformation function for image contrast enhancement. Experimental results show that our algorithm achieves the maximum entropy as well as the feature similarity values for image contrast enhancement.

Sound source localization (SSL), with a binaural input in practical environments, is a challenging task due to the effects of noise and reverberation. In psychoacoustic research field, one of the theories to explain the mechanism of human perception in such environments is the well-known equalization-cancellation (EC) model. Motivated by the EC theory, this paper investigates a binaural SSL method by integrating EC procedures into a beamforming technique. The principle idea is that the EC procedures are first utilized to eliminate the sound signal component at each candidate direction respectively; direction of sound source is then determined as the direction at which the residual energy is minimal. The EC procedures applied in the proposed method differ from those in traditional EC models, in which the interference signals in rooms are accounted in E and C operations based on limited prior known information. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms the traditional SSL algorithms in the presence of noise and reverberation simultaneously.

In this paper, a new analog signal transmission technique called analog single-carrier transmission with frequency-domain equalization (analog SC-FDE) is proposed. Analog SC-FDE applies discrete Fourier transform (DFT), frequency-domain spectrum shaping and mapping, inverse DFT (IDFT), and cyclic prefix (CP) insertion before transmission. At the receiver, one-tap FDE is applied to take advantage of frequency diversity. This paper considers, as an example, analog voice transmission. A theoretical analysis of the normalized mean square error (NMSE) performance is carried out to evaluate the transmission property of the proposed analog SC-FDE and is confirmed by computer simulation. We show that analog SC-FDE achieves better NMSE performance than conventional analog signal transmission scheme.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been attracting much attention because of its robustness against frequency selective fading. Instead of well-known cyclic prefix (CP) insertion, known training sequence (TS) insertion can be used for OFDM block transmission (called TS-OFDM). In this paper, we propose a new receiver design, which can obtain the frequency diversity gain through the use of frequency-domain equalization (FDE) for TS-OFDM. A conditional bit error rate (BER) analysis of the proposed FDE is presented. The average BER performance of the TS-OFDM signal transmission in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channel is evaluated by the Monte-Carlo numerical computation method using the derived conditional BER and is confirmed by computer simulation. Numerical and computer simulation results show the proposed TS-OFDM with FDE improves BER and throughput performance of TS-OFDM compared to the conventional TS-OFDM receiver due to the frequency diversity gain. It is also shown that the proposed TS-OFDM with FDE is more robust against imperfect channel estimation than the conventional TS-OFDM receiver.

In this paper, we propose a spectrally efficient frequency-domain channel estimation scheme suitable for training sequence inserted single-carrier (TS-SC) block transmission using frequency-domain equalization (FDE). The proposed scheme performs the channel estimation in two steps and allows the use of shorter TS (but, longer than the channel length) than the conventional channel estimation schemes. In the first step, the received TS having cyclic property is constructed for performing frequency-domain channel estimation and the improved channel estimate is obtained by using simple averaging of noisy channel estimates. In the second step, the maximum likelihood channel estimation is carried out iteratively by using both the TS and the estimated symbol sequence obtained in the first step. It is shown by computer simulation that the proposed 2-step frequency-domain iterative channel estimation scheme achieves a bit error rate (BER) performance close to perfect channel estimation even in a relatively fast fading environment.

To achieve high recording density in a bit-patterned media recording system, the spacing between data bit islands in both the along-track and the across-track directions must be decreased, thus leading to the increase of two-dimensional (2D) interference. One way to reduce the 2D interference is to apply a 2D coding scheme on a data sequence before recording; however, this method usually requires many redundant bits, thus lowering a code rate. Therefore, we propose a novel 2D coding scheme referred to as a recorded-bit patterning (RBP) scheme to mitigate the 2D interference, which requires no redundant bits at the expense of using more buffer memory. Specifically, an input data sequence is first split into three tracks in which will then be rotated to find the best 3-track data pattern based on a look-up table before recording, such that the shifted data tracks yield the least effect of 2D interference in the readback signal. Numerical results indicate that the proposed RBP scheme provides a significant performance improvement if compared to a conventional system (without 2D coding), especially when the recording density is high and/or the position jitter noise is large.

To mitigate the impact of the frequency selectivity of the wireless channel on the initial ranging (IR) process in 802.16 based WiMax systems, several well known pre-equalization techniques applied in the IR are first analyzed in detail, and the optimal pre-equalization scheme is further improved for the IR by overcoming its weaknesses. A numerical simulation shows that the proposed pre-equalization scheme significantly improves the performance of multiuser detection and parameter estimation in the IR process.

In this paper, joint transmit/receive frequency-domain equalization (FDE) is proposed for analog network coded (ANC) single-carrier (SC) bi-directional multi-antenna relay. In the proposed scheme, diversity transmission using transmit FDE is performed at relay station (RS) equipped with multiple antennas while receive FDE is carried out at base station (BS) and mobile terminal (MT) both equipped with single antenna. The transmit and receive FDE weights are jointly optimized so as to minimize the end-to-end mean square error (MSE). We evaluate, by computer simulation, the throughput performance and show that the joint transmit/receive FDE obtains the spatial and frequency diversity gains and accordingly achieve better throughput performance compared to either the transmit FDE only or the receive FDE only. It is also shown that ANC SC bi-directional multi-antenna relay can extend the communication coverage area for the given required throughput compared to conventional direct transmission.

Turbo equalization is an iterative equalization and decoding technique that can achieve impressive performance gains for communication systems. In this letter, we investigate the turbo equalization method for the decoding of the Davey-MacKay (DM) construction over the IDS-AWGN channels, which indicates a cascaded insertion, deletion, substitution (IDS) channel and an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. The inner decoder for the DM construction can be seen as an maximum a-posteriori (MAP) detector. It receives the beliefs generated by the outer LDPC decoder when turbo equalization is used. Two decoding schemes with different kinds of inner decoders, namely hard-input inner decoder and soft-input inner decoder, are investigated. Simulation results show that significant performance gains are obtained for both decoders with respect to the insertion/deletion probability at different SNR values.

A simple yet effective time domain correlation channel estimation method is proposed for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems over dispersive channels. It is known that the inherent co-channel interference (CCI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI) coexist when the signals propagate through MIMO frequency selective channels, which renders the MIMO channel estimation intractable. By elaborately devising the quasi-orthogonal training sequences between multiple antennas which have constant autocorrelation property with different cyclic shifts in the time domain, the interferences induced by ISI and CCI can be simultaneously maintained at a constant and identical value under quasi-static channels. As a consequence, it is advisable to implement the joint ISI and CCI cancelation by solving the constructed linear equation on the basis of the correlation output with optional correlation window. Finally, a general and simplified closed-form expression of the estimated channel impulse response can be acquired without matrix inversion. Additionally, the layered space-time (LST) minimum mean square error (MMSE) (LST-MMSE) frequency domain equalization is briefly described. We also provide some meaningful discussions on the beginning index of the variable correlation window and on the cyclic shift number of m-sequence of other antennas relative to the first antenna. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed channel estimation approach apparently outperforms the existing schemes with a remarkable reduction in computational complexity.

In OFDM systems, residual inter-block interference can be suppressed by a time-domain equalizer that blindly shortens the effective length of a channel impulse response. To further improve the performance of blind equalizers, we propose a channel shortening method that attempts to maximize the minimum FFT output power over data subcarriers. Simulation results indicate that the max-min strategy has performance improvement over a conventional channel shortening method.

In time-varying frequency selective channels, to obtain high-rate joint time-frequency diversity, linear dispersion coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (LDC-OFDM), has recently been proposed. Compared with OFDM systems, single-carrier systems may retain the advantages of lower PAPR and lower sensitivity to carrier frequency offset (CFO) effects, which motivates this paper to investigate how to achieve joint frequency and time diversity for high-rate single-carrier block transmission systems. Two systems are proposed: linear dispersion coded cyclic-prefix single-carrier modulation (LDC-CP-SCM) and linear dispersion coded zero-padded single-carrier modulation (LDC-ZP-SCM) across either multiple CP-SCM or ZP-SCM blocks, respectively. LDC-SCM may use a layered two-stage LDC decoding with lower complexity. This paper analyzes the diversity properties of LDC-CP-SCM, and provides a sufficient condition for LDC-CP-SCM to maximize all available joint frequency and time diversity gain and coding gain. This paper shows that LDC-ZP-SCM may be effectively equipped with low-complexity minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) equalizers. A lower complexity scheme, linear transformation coded SCM (LTC-SCM), is also proposed with good diversity performance.