Continuous-time blind channel deconvolution using Laguerre shifts

The objective of this paper is to study the problem of continuous-time blin d deconvolution of a pulse amplitude modulated signal propagated over an un known channel and perturbed by additive noise. The main idea is to use so-c alled Laguerre filters to estimate a continuous-time model of the channel. Laguerre-filter-based models can be viewed as an extension of finite-impuls e-response (FIR) models to the continuous-time case, and lead to compact an d parsimonious linear-in-the-parameters models. Given an estimate of the channel, different symbol estimation techniques ar e possible. Here, the shift property of Laguerre filters is used to derive a minimum mean square error estimator to recover the transmitted symbols. T his is done in a way that closely resembles recent FIR-based schemes for th e corresponding discrete-time case. The advantage of this concept is that physical a priori information can be incorporated in the model structure, like the transmitter pulse shape.