Minimum Pearson Distance Detection for Multilevel Channels With Gain and/or Offset Mismatch

The performance of certain transmission and storage channels, such as optical data storage and nonvolatile memory (flash), is seriously hampered by the phenomena of unknown offset (drift) or gain. We will show that minimum Pearson distance (MPD) detection, unlike conventional minimum Euclidean distance detection, is immune to offset and/or gain mismatch. MPD detection is used in conjunction with T-constrained codes that consist of q-ary codewords, where in each codeword T reference symbols appear at least once. We will analyze the redundancy of the new q-ary coding technique and compute the error performance of MPD detection in the presence of additive noise. Implementation issues of MPD detection will be discussed, and results of simulations will be given.