Practical reduced-complexity equaliser for

EDGE
N.H. Chow, T.G. Jeans and R. Tafazolli
EDGE uses the BPSK modulation scheme. It is difficult to employ
optimum equalisation due to the high computation complexity
required. Consequently, a sub-optimum technique offering an
approximation to maximum likelihood sequence estimation
performance is required. A simple, reduced complexity fractional
spaced equaliser structure involving the delayed decision feedback
sequence estimation is therefore presented. The fractional spaced
approach does not require additional pre-processing creating a
minimum phase overall channel impulse. It is suitable for
unknown channels and has near optimum performance.

Introduction: EDGE (enhanced data rates for GSM evolution) was

introduced as the common physical layer that will enable GSM
and IS-136 to evolve towards providing third-generation services.
EDGE employs linearised Gaussian minimum shift keying
(LGMSK) filtered 8PSK as the modulation scheme. This allows
the gross bit rate of GSM to be improved by a factor of three.
However, the use of 8PSK impacts on the complexity of optimum
equalisation. The complexity increases exponentially with the signal constellation size and the length of its overall channel impulse
response (OCIR). In [l] a receiver structure involving delayed
decision feedback sequence estimation (DDFSE), a T i e d receive
filter and additional pre-processing to compensate for mismatch
was proposed. In this Letter, we discuss a possible structure that is
simpler and has a performance that approximates the maximum
likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) without any additional
pre-processing.

number of trellis states remains the same as determined by p,

despite the fact that the receiver is processing samples twice as
fast. Furthermore, a T-spaced system is difficult to implement for
unknown channels and has poor performance when it is implemented with an MF that is derived from an inaccurate channel
estimate [6]. The main advantage of the T/2-spaced approach is
that the finite-length noise whitening matched filter (WMF) is
independent of the unknown channel and has a fixed structure.
The channel estimation can be performed after the finite-length
WMF.

System model: All signals are represented by their complex baseband equivalents. At the transmitter, random binary data are
mapped onto 8PSK symbols as specified in [7]. The kth received
symbol is sampled at rate 2/T and the output of finite-length
WMF is
P

%k+i

hZn+zxk-n

"2+(k-,-1)+2

f VZk+i

n=O

i = o , 1 (1)

transmit

iHc~)=H~(z)C(z)H,;(i/z*~~G*(,/z*)~.~

D&

1 11
Vk(Sk

{xk}

-+

Sk+l) =

vzrc-hoxk(Sk+Sk+l)

1634/11
Fig. 1 Complex baseband model
?(Z) =

H,,(z)H,T,

(i/z*) = G(z)G*(I/z*)

denotes complex conjugate

Receiver concept: The proposed T/2-spaced receiver structure

employs the T/2-spaced DDFSE as shown in Fig. 1, where T
refers to the symbol period. DDFSE is used because it employs
the Viterbi algorithm F A ) but with decision feedback incorporated into its metric calculation. The processing delay is constant.
The complexity is controlled by the parameter p, 0 5 p 5 U2,
where L is the length of the T/2-spaced OCIR. In DDFSE the
parameter p controls the complexity, and the number of trellis
states is defined as 8k. The effect of the remaining OCIR length is
taken into account on a per-survivor basis. The usual MLSE
scheme requires a matched filter (MF), which adapts to the
received pulse, which is unknown. However, if the receiver filter is
matched to the transmit pulse, followed by a rate 2/T sampler, a
T/2-spaced noise whitening filter (WF) and MLSE, this scheme is
optimum for a single-input and single-output IS1 channel in [2, 31.
We employed the DDFSE instead of the MLSE. Performance degradation is therefore expected. The proposed scheme requires a
WF and ideally it should be an infinite length non-casual filter [4].
Under the constraint of finite length, its coefficients could be
approximated using either a decision feedback equaliser (DFE) [4]
or forward prediction error (PEF) filter [5]. The PEF method is
preferred because the coefficients can be easily computed using the
Levinson-Durbin algorithm. Using the proposed scheme, the oversampling requires twice the amount of arithmetic at each trellis
state in the VA as compared to a T-spaced receiver, although the

ELECTRONICS LETTERS

26th April 2007

Vol. 37

vZk+l-hlzk(Sk+Sk+l)

where sk + sk+lrepresents the state transition at epoch k.

Simulation results: The simulation assumes perfect synchronisation

and channel estimation. The received pulse is obtained by summing the delayed and sampled version of the shaped pulses corresponding to each ray. The received pulse and the finite-length
WMF convolve to form the OCIR. The channel is assumed to be
static but random. The variance of each ray is defined in the chosen GSM channel models. These are rural area (RA), typical
urban (TU), hilly terrain (HT), and equaliser test (EQ). The ST
(static, AWGN) is also introduced to verify the equaliser in the
absence of dispersion. For comparison, p = 1 was selected as
being suited for all profiles [I].
In ST there is only one ray. The OCIR has an approximately
minimum phase due to the finite-length WMF. As a result, performance approximating to MLSE is expected, and in Fig. 2 the
result for ST is within O.ldB of those obtained in [l]. For the rest
of the channel profile, the OCIR does not have a minimum phase,
hence performance degradation is expected. The degradation
depends only on the channel characteristic. For RA, the results

No. 9

593

are within O.ldB when compared to the static AWGN case and
for TU only 1.5dB worse at a bit error rate of
For HT, the
result is comparable to that in [I]. In EQ, severe dispersion occurs
because the rays are evenly spaced with equal energy. Since
DDFSE uses p + 1 symbol taps of the OCIR in the definition of
the trellis state, this leads to the worst equaliser performance,
although this a somewhat unrealistic scenario.

Radio transmission system using FM high

dimensional chaotic oscillator
L. Larger, J.-P. Goedgebuer, V.S. Udaltsov and
W.T. Rhodes
A transmission system for secure radio-communication is
proposed. It is based on a delayed nonlinear electronic oscillator,

which produces directly an FM-chaotic carrier for information

masking. Experimental encryptioddecryption results are
presented.

10

15
Eb/No, dB

20

25

Fig. 2 BER against EdN, for T/Z-DDFSE over GSM channel profiles

-0--X--

--O---U--

--+--

transmitted FMq r y p t e d signal

amplitude
detector

ST
RA
TU
HT
EQ

Conclusion: Tl2-spaced DDFSE has been proposed to achieve

practical equalisation and receiver complexity reduction simultaneously. In [I], the additional pre-processing transforms the OCIR
into its minimum phase equivalent, which is highly desirable for
DDFSE but incurs additional complexity, as adaptation to the
unknown OCIR is necessary. The proposed structure eliminates
the pre-processing requirement by adopting a fractional spaced
structure and is shown to cope with the various GSM channel
conditions with comparable performance.
0 IEE 2001
Electronics Letters Online No: 20010382
DOI: 10.1049/el:20010382

3I January 2001

N.H. Chow, T.G. Jeans and R. Tafazolli (Centre for Communication

Systems Research, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GUZ 7XH,
United Kingdom)

E-mail: n.chow@surrey.ac.uk

References
GERSTACKER, W.H., and SCHOBER, R.: Equalisation for EDGE
mobile communications, Electron. Lett., 2000, 36, (2), pp. 189-191
JOUNG, J., and STUBER,G.L.: Performance of truncated co-channel
interference canceling MLSE for TDMA systems. IEEE Vehicular
Technology Conf., May 1998, pp. 1710-1714
HAMIED, K., and STOBER, G.L.: Performance of trellis-coded
modulation for multipath fading equalised IS1 channels, ZEEE
Trans. Veh. Technol., 1995, 44, pp. 50-58
MEYR, H.,
MOENECLAEY, M.,
and FECHTEL, S.A.: Digital
communication receiver - synchronization, channel estimation and
signal processing (Wiley Interscience, 1998)
GERSTACKER, W.H., OBERNOSTERER, F., MEYER, R., and HUBER, J.B.:
An efficient method for prefilter computation for reduced-state
equalization. PIMRC2000, pp. 604-609
STUBER,G.L.: Principles of mobile communication (Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1996)
ETSI: Digital cellular telecommunications (phase2+);modulation
GSM 05.04 version 7.1.0. Release 1998
DUEL-HALLEN, A., and HEEGARD, c.: Delayed decision-feedback
sequence estimation, IEEE Trans. Commun., 1989, COM-37, pp.
428-436

594

Introduction: New encryption methods using chaos have been of

great interest since the first demonstration of chaos synchronisation ten years ago [l]. Much work has been devoted to experimental demonstrators of secure communication systems based on
chaos coding and decoding in electronics [2 - 41. Most electronic
transmission systems reported so far use chaos of low dimensionality. In this Letter we report an encryption system using a nonlinear electronic oscillator based on a voltage controlled oscillator
(VCO). Such an oscillator is capable of generating high dimensional chaos [5] to ensure a potentially high degree of confidentiality. The transmitter generates directly a chaotic frequency
modulated (FM) carrier suitable for radio transmission.

frequency, kHz (x102)

b1557/11

Fig. 1 Transmitter
a Block diagram
b Baseband signal s(t) encoding 3kHz sine test message (upper trace),

spectrum Sy) (middle trace) and spectrum of FM-transmitted signal

(lower trace)

Encoding: Encrypting an information message m(t) is performed

using an in-loop additive masking technique. Fig. la shows the
transmitter block diagram. Let us first assume that no message
[m(t)= 01 is encoded. The device then operates as an autonomous
chaos generator as described in [5]. The VCO is driven by a lowfrequency voltage c(t) (freq. < 1OkHz) to generate a carrier FM
signal the frequency of which,f,(t), is modulated by c(t) and which
can be tuned in the 300 to 700kHz range:f,(t) =fo + S c(t),where
S = df,/dc is the tuning rate of the VCO (in kHzN), and& is its
central frequency. The frequency variations of the FM signal are
then converted nonlinearly into an amplitude-modulated (AM)
signal by a multi-resonant filter. The latter is described by a complex transfer function ccfl, the modulus of which IccflI exhibits
multiple extrema. In the device, this multi-resonant filter is formed
by three parallel resonant RLC filters with resonance frequenciesf;
= 350, 458, 545kHz and quality factors Q,= 15.0, 15.2, 15.6,
respectively [5]. The time domain impulse response is g(t) =
P[Gv)], where F- stands for the inverse Fourier transform. The
signal at the fdter output is given by g(t) = [{ V,cos[2&(0)f3]} *
{g@))](t),where * is a convolution and V, is the VCO output
amplitude. An amplitude detector formed by a fdl-wave rectifier
(FWR) and a baseband filter with a transfer curve Hv) of bandwidth Afl and a time impulse response h(t) = P1[H(j)] is used to
demodulate the amplitude of g(t). The FWR provides at its output a voltage d(t) = Ig(t)l, which is the input to the baseband filter
No,thus giving an output signal e(t) = [d * h](t).AfH is at least
equal to the bandwidth of the information message m(t) in order
to mask it efficiently (e.g. lOOHz to 8kHz for a voice coding).
The VCO is fed back with the signal e(t) amplified with a gain
factor K and time-delayed by T = 5 4 4 ~ The
. voltage c(t), which
inputs the VCO, is then shown to be expressed as [5]:

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