Nonlinear effects in LMS adaptive equalizers

An adaptive transversal equalizer based on the least-mean-square (LMS) algorithm, operating in an environment with a temporally correlated interference, can exhibit better steady-state mean-square-error (MSE) performance than the corresponding Wiener filter. This phenomenon is a result of the nonlinear nature of the LMS algorithm and is obscured by traditional analysis approaches that utilize the independence assumption (current filter weight vector assumed to be statistically independent of the current data vector). To analyze this equalizer problem, we use a transfer function approach to develop approximate analytical expressions of the LMS MSE for sinusoidal and autoregressive interference processes. We demonstrate that the degree to which LMS may outperform the corresponding Wiener filter is dependent on system parameters such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), equalizer length, and the step-size parameter.