Multipath diversity of precoded OFDM with linear equalization

This paper settles a controversy over the multipath diversity performance of the precoded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system with the linear equalization. Through the asymptotical analysis of the bit error rates with extreme system parameters, a comprehensive understanding of the linear equalization's behavior in the frequency-selective multipath fading channels is gained. Compared with the optimum maximum-likelihood detection, the diversity performance of the linear equalization can be well described by an asymptotical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation, which reveals that the linear equalization can achieve the maximum multipath diversity within an operational SNR range but will lose diversity advantage as SNR increases.