Patent ID: 7403509

Claim:
A wireless communication device comprising: one or more antennas that receive a block-spread wireless communication signal via one or more channels; a de-spreading unit that forms a respective stream of de-interleaved chips for each of the channels; and a block equalizer that generates a block of symbol estimates via a single-step block equalization process by grouping the streams of de-interleaved chips and collecting chips from each of the streams of de-interleaved chips associated with different channels to form a vector of chips, wherein the block equalizer generates the block of symbol estimates by processing the vector of chips with a block equalization matrix to produce the block of symbol estimates as a vector of symbol estimates, and wherein the block equalizer forms the vector of chips according to the following equation: r μ := [ r ~ μ , 1 a r ~ μ , 2 a r ~ μ , 1 b r ~ μ , 2 b ] = [ A μ a ⁢ H _ 1 a ⁢ ⁢ H _ 1 b ⁢ ⁢ 0 A μ a ⁢ H _ 2 a ⁢ ⁢ H _ 2 b ⁢ ⁢ 0 A μ b ⁢ H _ 1 b ⁢ ⁢ 0 ⁢ ⁢ H _ 1 a ⁢ A μ b ⁢ H _ 2 b ⁢ ⁢ 0 ⁢ ⁢ H _ 2 a ⁢ ] ⁡ [ s ~ μ s ~ 1 b s ~ 1 a ] + [ ( D ~ μ a H ⁢ w ~ 1 ) ( D ~ μ a H ⁢ w ~ 2 ) ( D ~ μ b H ⁢ w ~ 1 ) ( D ~ μ b H ⁢ w ~ 2 ) ] , where {tilde over (r)} μ represents a group of the streams of de-interleaved chips received by a μ th user, A μ− represents the μ th user's transmit power, {tilde over (r)} μ,m b represents a stream of de-interleaved chips received by the μ th user via an m th channel from a transmitter b, {tilde over (s)} l a represents an inter-cell interference from a transmitter a corresponding to transmitter b, {tilde over (w)} m represents noise of a wireless communication channel through the m th channel, and {tilde over (D)} μ b represents a de-spreading matrix applied by the de-spreading unit for the respective transmitter b.