Bounds on the Information Rate of Intersymbol Interference Channels Based on Mismatched Receivers

We consider the problem of bounding the information rate of intersymbol interference channels via simulation-based algorithms. The adopted approach, which is based on a general class of reduced-complexity receivers that includes several previously studied receivers as special cases, leads to provable upper and lower bounds on the information rate of interest. As a by-product of the information-theoretic investigations, novel insights on the design of efficient reduced-complexity receivers are also provided, since the proposed lower bounds are known to be achievable by practical receivers. In many scenarios, our novel approach significantly outperforms the existing ones, for all practical values of the signal-to-noise ratio.