Tap-selectable decision-feedback equalization

This paper presents an adaptive tap assignment technique for improving the performance of a previously reported reduced-complexity decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) for broadband band wireless systems. The spacings of individual feedforward taps of the DFE are made selectable so that, when the channel consists of a sparsely distributed multipath with a large delay spread (e.g. “hilly terrain” (HT) delay profiles), the equalizer span can be increased without increasing the total number of taps. We propose simple tap selection algorithms and show that they provide: (1) performance gains over a contiguous-tap approach in various outdoor delay profiles and (2) improved robustness against fast fading