Conditional ML and MAP techniques for error propagation suppression in multi-path DFE detectors

Simple and effective Error Propagation (EP) suppression techniques were rep orted earlier for decision feedback equalization (DFE) detectors, However, these techniques are not well suited for multi-path DFE detectors because E P suppression and path selection mechanisms interfere with each other, In t his paper, we propose novel techniques for improving the EP performance of multi-path DFE schemes, in particular, the (1, 7) coded M3DFE (advanced mul ti-level DFE), The effectiveness of the proposed techniques is quantified b y evaluating the sector failure rate (SFR) improvement. Simulation and calc ulation results show that after applying the proposed EP suppression techni ques, M3DFE achieves almost the same SFR as that caused by random errors.