Performance of Linear and Widely Linear Equalizers for FBMC/OQAM modulation

In this paper, we compare BER performance of linear (MMSE-LE) and widely linear (MMSE-WLE) equalizers applied on a filter bank multi-carrier modulation with Offset-QAM modulation (FBMC-OQAM). Theoretical expressions of bit error rate (BER) are derived with very good agreement with simulations. An equivalent model using $M$ -ary pulse amplitude modulation (M-PAM) is derived from the FBMC modulator/demodulator. Theoretical BER expressions are based on this model. We show that BER for the LE is highly dependent on the fact that adjacent sub-carriers are switched on or off while WLE gives always the best possible performance.