On the performance of data receivers with a restricted decoding-delay

Summary form only given, as follows. It is well known that the performance of a data receiver for an intersymbol interference channel can depend strongly on its decoding delay. The authors' investigations show that the symbol error probability is mainly determined by what they introduce as the restricted-delay distance. They derive a lower bound as a function of the decoding delay in which this restricted-delay distance plays a crucial role. In general, this restricted-delay bound improves upon G.D. Forney's lower bound (1972) for signal-to-noise ratios that are too small. It follows immediately from the new bound that for certain channels it is impossible to design receivers with a short-decoding delay that perform as well as receivers with a considerably longer delay. For the 1-D channel the authors carried out computer simulations with a restricted-delay receiver as described by Ferguson (1972). These simulations show that for reasonable signal-to-noise ratios the performance of this receiver approaches the restricted-delay bound, hence the new bound is asymptotically tight. The authors finally investigate the relation between the phase-frequency response of a channel and its restricted-delay distance profile.