Robust decision feedback equalisation using error propagation detection

It is shown that depending on the channel and the operating signal to noise ratio, the onset of error propagation in a decision feedback equaliser (DFE) is a detectable event. With the exploitation of this event using error correcting schemes the run length distribution of the feedback errors can be altered so as to improve the average bit error rate (BER). A novel fractionally spaced DFE using feedback error detection is presented which offers BER improvement over the conventional fractionally spaced DFE with only a small increase in complexity. A number of error correcting schemes are explored, the simplest of which has the lowest BER