Patent ID: 8121220
Filing Date: 2012-02-21
Classification: H04B,H04L

Abstract:
1. A method of estimating a plurality of transmit symbols s i , i=1 to n, in a transmit symbol vector s of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, where n is a size of the transmit symbol vector s, the method comprising: calculating a plurality of permuted MIMO channel matrices H determining a QR decomposition of each permuted MIMO channel matrix H determining a plurality of modified receive symbol vectors y estimating each transmit symbol s using a receiver, determining a soft decision reliability metric for a bit of the transmit symbol s wherein determining the soft decision reliability metric for a bit of the estimated transmit symbol s calculating a set of error distances, one error distance for each different symbol value σ calculating an error distance of the estimated transmit symbol vector s containing the estimated transmit symbol s determining a minimum error distance for a bit value of “one” for the bit of the estimated transmit symbol s determining the soft decision reliability metric based on a difference between the minimum error distance with the bit value of “one” and the minimum error distance with the bit value of “zero”.