On frequency-domain equalization and diversity combining for broadband wireless communications

This paper is concerned with the use of frequency-domain equalization (FDE) and space diversity within block transmission schemes for broadband wireless communications. The expected performance with both multicarrier (MC) and single-carrier (SC) modulations is emphasized, when a cyclic prefix, long enough to cope with the maximum relative channel delay, is appended to each transmitted block. A set of numerical results is presented and discussed, with the help of appropriate, analytical performance bounds which are conditional on a given channel realization. These bounds are used to explain the performance advantage of the SC/FDE option, the benefits of space diversity, and the impact of the criterion for computing the FDE parameters.