Patent ID: 7881391

Claim:
A method of decoding orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) symbols of two or more transmitted data streams, the method comprising: precomputing and storing one or more terms of a modified L 2 -squared-norm cost function for predetermined complex symbol values of one or more tones of OFDM symbols prior to performing a searching process; performing the searching process that comprises computing the modified L 2 -squared-norm cost function using the precomputed terms and received data symbols of the two or more transmitted data streams to generate a search output, the computing using shifting and adding operations; and generating soft bits corresponding to the two or more transmitted data streams from the search output, wherein the shifting and adding operations are selected to eliminate most or all multiplication operations during the precomputing and during the searching process, and wherein the shifting and adding operations comprise decomposing real and imaginary parts of constellation symbols in a candidate transmitted symbol vector into sums of powers of two, wherein multiplications by the powers of two are computed by the shifting operations and the sums are computed by the adding operations.