Sparse decision feedback equalization for underwater acoustic channel based on minimum symbol error rate

Abstract Underwater Acoustic Channels (UAC) have inherent sparse characteristics. The traditional adaptive equalization techniques do not utilize this feature to improve the performance. In this paper we consider the Variable Adaptive Subgradient Projection (V-ASPM) method to derive a new sparse equalization algorithm based on the Minimum Symbol Error Rate (MSER) criterion. Compared with the original MSER algorithm, our proposed scheme adds sparse matrix to the iterative formula, which can assign independent step-sizes to the equalizer taps. How to obtain such proper sparse matrix is also analyzed. On this basis, the selection scheme of the sparse matrix is obtained by combining the variable step-sizes and equalizer sparsity measure. We call the new algorithm Sparse-Control Proportional-MSER (SC-PMSER) equalizer. Finally, the proposed SC-PMSER equalizer is embedded into a turbo receiver, which perform turbo decoding, Digital Phase-Locked Loop (DPLL), time-reversal receiving and multi-reception diversity. Simulation and real-field experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has better performance in convergence speed and Bit Error Rate (BER).