ABSTRACT
Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) equalizers are of enormous importance in wireless communication systems due to their ability to combat the effect of Intersymbol Interference (ISI) in multipath environment. In this research, a MIMO 2X2, 2X3, 2X4, 2x5, 4X4, and 6X6 system transmission with Binary Phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation in Rayleigh fading channel was modeled and simulated using MATLAB V8.4.0.529 (R2009b) Communication toolbox. The different equalization schemes namely Zero Forcing (ZF), Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) which mitigated the effect of ISI were compared to analyze the Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of the system. The results showed that the BER decreased as the antenna configuration is increased from 2X2, 4X4, to 6X6 for ML and MMSE case only. For a BER point 10-3 which is the benchmark for voice quality service, the ML equalizer outperformed the MMSE up to 11dB while the MMSE had a better performance over ZF with about 3 dB gain. Also results shows that a constant gain of 11 dB is maintained between ML and MMSE irrespective of the antenna configuration employed. This implied that, there is much reduction in transmitter power requirement when using ML equalizer as compared to MMSE and ZF. This is important with respect to energy savings and cost of radio equipment