Patent ID: 8565329

Claim:
A receiver for use in a communication system to receive information-bearing signals transmitted from a transmitter, the receiver comprising: an inner decoder structure having a multiple-in multiple-out (MIMO) joint demapper to perform joint inner demapping over each tone, the joint demapper being operable to apply a soft-output M-algorithm (SOMA) to identify survivor candidates at each depth in a detection tree being searched for each tone, including surviving full-length candidates, based on at least one metric and at least one other criterion, wherein the at least one other criterion changes based on selection of survivor candidates that enables a forward pass through, where a number of best alternatives from every level of the tree are expanded along with one or more alternatives selected meeting the at least one other criterion and where soft-output related information is collected and stored for each bit, and an outer decoder operable with the inner decoder to perform iterative decoding, wherein the outer decoder is one of a group consisting of a maximum a posterior (MAP) decoder, a MaxLogMAP decoder, and a turbo-type decoder, each for an encoder that comprises a binary outer code from a group consisting of a convolutional code, a rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) code, and a turbo code and a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code, and wherein, in the forward pass through the detection tree, the joint demapper is operable to output a best full-length path visited by the SOMA and compute soft-output calculations, and in a backward pass through parts of the detection tree traversed during the forward pass through, the joint demapper is operable to compute reliability information for all bits with respect to the best full-length path based on information stored at various stages of the forward pass through the detection tree.