  The error-pattern correcting code (EPCC) is incorporated in the design of a
turbo equalizer (TE) with aim to correct dominant error events of the
inter-symbol interference (ISI) channel at the output of its matching Viterbi
detector. By targeting the low Hamming-weight interleaved errors of the outer
convolutional code, which are responsible for low Euclidean-weight errors in
the Viterbi trellis, the turbo equalizer with an error-pattern correcting code
(TE-EPCC) exhibits a much lower bit-error rate (BER) floor compared to the
conventional non-precoded TE, especially for high rate applications. A
maximum-likelihood upper bound is developed on the BER floor of the TE-EPCC for
a generalized two-tap ISI channel, in order to study TE-EPCC's signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) gain for various channel conditions and design parameters. In
addition, the SNR gain of the TE-EPCC relative to an existing precoded TE is
compared to demonstrate the present TE's superiority for short interleaver
lengths and high coding rates.
