Patent ID: 7330519

Claim:
An iterative method for decoding a signal vector Y obtained from N sampled signals in a space-time communication system with M transmission antennae and N receiving antennae, with N and M being integers and N greater than or equal to M, with a view to obtaining an estimation of symbols of signals transmitted; characterized in that each iteration comprises the following steps: Pre-processing of the vector Y in order to maximize a signal to noise+interference ratio in order to obtain a signal {tilde over (r)} l , Subtraction from the signal {tilde over (r)} l of a signal {circumflex over (z)} l by means of a subtractor, the signal {circumflex over (z)} l being obtained by reconstruction post-processing of an interference between symbols of an iteration in progress from symbols estimated during a preceding iteration, Detection of a signal generated by the subtractor in order to obtain, for the iteration in progress, an estimation of the symbols of the signals transmitted; and in that, the N signals being processed by time intervals T corresponding to a time length of a linear space-time code associated with the signals transmitted, the pre-processing step utilizes a matrix B in order to maximize the signal to noise+interference ratio, a transfer function of which is: B l = Diag ( 1 ρ l - 1 2 ⁢ A i l + N 0 E s ) ⁢ ⁢ 1 ≤ i ≤ MT · C H ⁢ V l with ⁢ ⁢ V l = [ 1 - ρ l - 1 2 N 0 E s · C · C H + Id N ] - 1 ; A l = diag ⁡ ( C H · V l · C ) ; wherein Λ: iteration index; ρ: standardized correlation coefficient between real symbols and estimated symbols; N 0 : noise variance; Es: mean energy of a symbol; C: extended channel matrix; Id N : identity matrix of size N; C H : conjugate transpose of C; i: index ranging from 1 to MT; and in that a post-processing step involves a matrix D for the reconstruction of the interference between symbols, a transfer function of which is: D l = B l · C · ρ l - 1 - Diag ( 1 ρ l - 1 2 ⁢ A i l + N 0 E s ) ⁢ 1 ≤ i ≤ MT .