Iterative Equalization of STSK-Aided Single-Carrier Systems: Design and Analysis with Non-Ideal Power Amplifiers

A plethora of new applications will be enabled by next generation wireless networks. These demand sophisticated medium access control and physical layer protocols in order to fulfill the requirements in terms of spectral efficiency, bit error rate (BER), energy efficiency, reliability, and security, among others. This paper develops an advanced space-time multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) solution that builds on the concept of space-time shift keying (STSK) for single-carrier frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE). STSK-aided SC-FDE, or SSF, ensures space-time and frequency diversity in dispersive channels, but can only support suboptimal linear receiver schemes. We therefore introduce a turbo equalizer for SSF in frequency-selective multipath channels. It enables inter-symbol-interference cancellation by means of iterative space-time processing. We coin it the iterative space-time block equalizer (SSF-ISTBE). We provide the mathematical formulation for the proposed SSF-ISTBE framework in non-linear channel conditions. We demonstrate that the SSF-ISTBE achieves a substantial 4 dB gain in terms of BER over the linear minimum mean square error equalizer while significantly reducing the computational complexity of the optimal maximum likelihood SSF. When considering practical transceivers, in particular non-linear power amplifiers, the gain of the SSF-ISTBE becomes more prominent over state-of-the-art approaches, demonstrating its robustness against non-linear distortion.