An Adaptive Maximum Likelihood Receiver for Rayleigh Fading Channels

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a practical receiver for Rayleigh fadin?; channels. which does not exhibit the error floor found for conventional receivers in this channel. .-\ model of a general time and frequency-selective channel is developed, and the opt.imal receiver structure for a time-selective channel is derived for general signalling. The theoretical performance of a standard and maximum likelihood receiver is analyzed for the case of f\Iary differential phase shift keying. A recursive, channel adaptive version of the optimal receiver is derived, and through simulation, its performance is compared to theoretical expectations . Results indicate that such a receiver will reduce the receiver error floor severnl orders of magnitude at typical channel signal-to-noise ratios.