Blind equalization and estimation of digital communication FIR channels using cumulant matching

The problem of blind estimation and equalization of digital communication FIR (finite impulse response) channel is considered. The channel parameters are estimated by nonlinear batch optimization of a quadratic cumulant matching criterion involving second- and fourth-order cumulants of the received data. A new algorithm is proposed for (asymptotically) globally convergent, linear estimation of the FIR channel parameters where the FIR model order is not necessarily known. The nonlinear cumulant matching algorithm is initialized by the linear parameter estimator. The estimated channel impulse response is then used to construct a linear equalizer. An illustrative simulation example using QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) signals is presented