Low-Complexity Recurrent Neural Network Detector for Faster-than-Nyquist Signaling

This study proposes a low-complexity, bidirectional, single-pass Elman recurrent neural network detector for binary phase-shift keying signals transmitted with faster-than-Nyquist signaling. Since the faster-than-Nyquist intersymbol interference has a short, finite memory, the classical Elman recurrent neural network, which contains no gating mechanism, is a sufficient and parameter-efficient model. The proposed detector processes the received sequence in both forward and backward directions in a single pass, forming a learned counterpart of the optimal BCJR forward-backward recursion. Under a root-raised-cosine pulse over an additive white Gaussian noise channel, simulations for two compression factors show that the proposed detector, with only twenty-five to sixty-five trainable parameters, attains a bit error rate very close to that of the M-BCJR algorithm, while reducing the look-up-table hardware cost by thirty-eight to forty-six percent and using no explicit division or exponential operations. A more compact configuration offers up to a sixty-seven percent reduction at a small performance penalty. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the classical Elman recurrent neural network architecture for the faster-than-Nyquist detection problem.