Adaptive block-length partitioned Viterbi algorithm

To improve wireless system performance using co-channel signals and multiple receiver antennas, we develop a new adaptive block-length partitioned Viterbi algorithm (ABL-PVA) receiver for the MIMO frequency-selective fading channel. The classic PVA has a trellis detector for each transmit antenna and feeds back tentative decisions between these trellis detectors which can cause error propagation. The proposed receiver selects a trace-back length based on an instantaneous SNR level to optimize its performance. Computer simulation results indicate that when compared with PVA, the proposed receiver improves the BER performance without any complexity increase.