Patent ID: 7616699

Claim:
A method of soft bit metric calculation for received data signals in a telecommunications receiver, comprising: employing a processor for: performing Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) detection for the received signal and determining estimated data symbols and a pseudo inverse H+ of a N r ×N t matrix; calculating a diagonal element of a noise variance matrix obtained from H + ; determining distances between the estimated data symbols and constellation points; and scaling the distances using the diagonal element to calculate scaled soft bit metrics, wherein the soft bit metrics are calculated based on determining a log-likelihood ratio (LLR) as LLR ji ′ = LLR ji  H j +  2 , where ⁢ ⁢ H j + ⁢ ⁢ is the ⁢ ⁢ j th ⁢ ⁢ row of ⁢ ⁢ H + ,  H j +  2 is the vector norm, and i and j are positive integers.