Pre-equalized Faster-than-Nyquist Transmission

Abstract

Faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) transmission applies non-orthogonal linear modulation to increase spectral efficiency compared with the well-known orthogonal transmission at Nyquist rate. This comes at a price of inter-symbol interference (ISI), which usually is equalized through receiver processing. In this paper, we investigate the alternative approach of pre-equalization at the transmitter. First, we consider Tomlinson–Harashima precoding (THP) for FTN and propose two novel soft demapping algorithms to generate the soft-input for the error-correction decoder. The developed demappers effectively compensate the modulo-loss associated with conventional THP transmission. Second, we propose a linear pre-filtering strategy to pre-equalize the ISI induced by FTN. We show that the linear pre-equalization approach is equivalent to an orthogonal transmission with a modified pulse shape. It thus yields the optimal error-rate performance while affording higher spectral efficiency. We validate our proposed precoding algorithms through computer simulations of a coded coherent optical communication system as a practical application example for FTN.