Joint Tomlinson-Harashima Precoding and Frequency-Domain Equalization for Broadband Single-Carrier Transmission

The performance of single-carrier (SC) transmission in a frequency-selective fading channel degrades due to a severe inter-symbol interference (ISI). Using frequency-domain equalization (FDE) based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion can improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of SC transmission. However, the residual ISI after FDE limits the performance improvement. In this paper, we propose a joint use of Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) and FDE to remove the residual ISI. An approximate conditional BER analysis is presented for the given channel condition. The achievable average BER performance is evaluated by Monte-Carlo numerical computation method using the derived conditional BER. The BER analysis is confirmed by computer simulation of the signal transmission. key words: single-carrier, frequency-domain equalization, TomlinsonHarashima precoding