Asymptotically minimum BER linear block precoders for MMSE equalisation

An asymptotically minimum bit error rate (BER) linear block precoder is determined for block-by-block communication systems employing linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalisation and disjoint detection. The problem is solved by a two-stage optimisation procedure in which a lower bound on the BER is first minimised, and then it is shown how this minimised lower bound can be achieved. Simulation results show that the BER performance of the proposed scheme is superior to the standard MMSE precoder and several other conventional systems such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. At reasonable BERs, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain can be of the order of several decibels.