EQUALIZATION

Equalizer design must typically balance ISI mitigation with noise enhancement, since both the signal and the noise pass through the equalizer, which can increase the noise power. Nonlinear equalizers suffer less from noise enhancement than linear equalizers, but typically entail higher compensation to mitigate the resulting ISI. Since the wireless channel varies over time, the equalizer must learn the frequency or impulse response of the channel (training) and then update its estimate of the frequency response as the channel changes (tracking). The process of equalizer training and tracking is often referred to as adaptive equalization, since the equalizer adapts to the changing channel. Equalizer training and tracking can be quite difficult if the channel is changing rapidly.