Patent ID: 8040959

Claim:
A method for MIMO-OFDM detection comprising: receiving a first MIMO-OFDM sub-carrier and receiving a second MIMO-OFDM sub-carrier; assigning a first type of detector having a first complexity to estimate a symbol of the first MIMO-OFDM sub-carrier; assigning a second type of detector having a second complexity to estimate a symbol of the second MIMO-OFDM sub-carrier, the first complexity being different than the second complexity; computing a list metric for all sub-carriers prior to assigning a list length to a type of detector; assigning a first list length to a the first type of detector and assigning a second list length to the second type of detector based on at least one assignment method selected from a group consisting of: assigning the respective list length to the respective type of detector where the assignment maximizes the improvement in list metric over all sub-carriers; assigning the respective list length to the respective type of detector processing a sub-carrier having the lowest list metric among all sub-carriers, assigning the respective list length to the respective type of detector processing a sub-carrier to produce a target list metric for the sub-carrier; assigning the respective list length to the respective type of detector processing a sub-carrier by ranking sub-carriers by list metric, dividing the ranked sub-carriers into groups, and assigning a same list length to each type of detector processing a sub-carrier of a group; and providing symbol estimates produced by the first type of detector and the second type of detector to a decoder.