Patent ID: 7489746

Claim:
A wireless receiver that receives a received signal from a wireless multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) channel and detects from the received signal a maximum likelihood for a corresponding transmitted signal, the wireless receiver comprising: an input for receiving N input signals comprising the received signal, N being greater than one; storage for a channel matrix H; logic for calculating a matrix Q and a matrix R from H such that H=QR and R has at least one more real term than H, at least one more zero term than H, or both; storage for matrix Q and matrix R; a maximum likelihood detector that determines the maximum likelihood for the corresponding transmitted signal using distance comparisons for a plurality of considered transmitted signals, wherein the plurality of considered transmitted signals is a subset of less than all the possible transmitted signals and equal to c (M−1) signals, wherein M is the number of transmit antennas used and c is the number of constellations possible for each transmit antenna, wherein a distance for a given considered transmitted signal x is at least an approximation of a distance between the received signal transformed by Q and a multiplication of the matrix R and the given considered transmitted signal x.