Patent ID: 8315343

Claim:
A method of processing a composite signal including a plurality of component signal streams received by a multi-antenna receiver, comprising: using QR-decomposition to detect symbols and calculate a decision metric for each of the signal streams; performing soft serial interference cancellation on the composite signal based on the symbols detected for different ones of the signal streams and a ranking of the signal streams by regenerating each signal stream from the corresponding symbols detected using QR-decomposition and cancelling each regenerated signal stream from the composite signal in order based on rank; re-detecting the symbols and re-calculating the decision metric for each signal stream based on the soft interference cancellation results; comparing the different decision metric calculations for at least one of the signal streams to determine whether symbol detection is more accurate with or without soft serial interference cancellation; and decoding the signal streams using the symbols detected based on the soft serial interference cancellation results when symbol detection is determined to be more accurate with soft serial interference cancellation, otherwise based on the symbols detected using QR-decomposition.