Patent ID: 7649966
Filing Date: 2010-01-19
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A soft symbol value decoder for use at a receiver of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system having K transmit antennas and N receive antennas with K being an integer corresponding to a number of transmit antennas and K being greater than one and with N being an integer corresponding to a number of receive antennas, wherein the soft symbol decoder indicates a degree of confidence in bit values received in the MIMO communication system, the soft symbol value decoder comprising: an input for receiving a digital signal that represents a number of source bits of a symbol transmitted over the K transmit antennas; a detector for determining a vector point within a plurality of vector points in a signaling constellation; logic for determining a set of soft metrics comprising a soft metric for each of the source bits, wherein the set of soft metrics L(b L(b where σ is a standard deviation of noise/interference, x j represents the j-th possible value for x, b i represents each bit encoded by x, i and j are integers, and H is a channel matrix modeling phase shifts and amplitude changes on paths between the K transmit antennas and the N receive antennas; and logic for using the set of soft metrics to determine a soft symbol value.