An Asymptotic Approach to Parallel Equalization of Filter Bank Based Multicarrier Signals

A novel equalization structure for filter bank based multicarrier (FBMC) based modulations is proposed in this paper. The equalizer architecture is derived by assuming that the number of carriers is asymptotically large, and it consists of multiple parallel stages that are linearly combined on a per-subcarrier basis. The traditional single-tap per-subcarrier equalizer is obtained as a special case of the proposed architecture when the number of stages is fixed to one. An analytical characterization of the output signal to noise plus distortion ratio is provided, which can be used in practice to fix the number of parallel stages of the equalizer in order to obtain a certain performance level at the minimum complexity. Both simulations and analytical predictions indicate that high performance gains can be obtained with respect to more conventional FBMC equalization approaches. Furthermore, the proposed architecture is also shown to present important advantages in terms of computational complexity when compared with classical FBMC equalization architectures.