Patent ID: 8194801

Claim:
A method for communication, comprising: receiving a spatially-multiplexed signal, which comprises multiple simultaneously-transmitted symbols that are selected from respective sets of constellation symbols and together represent N data bits, to produce multiple respective received signals; traversing combinations of the constellation symbols, each combination comprising one constellation symbol from each of the sets of the constellation symbols, in accordance with an order of traversal that is defined to traverse each combination at most once, and searching the traversed combinations for a combination that matches the received signals; during traversal of the combinations, accumulating at least 2N measures of likelihood regarding values of the data bits represented by each traversed combination; and processing the accumulated measures of likelihood to produce soft bit metrics, wherein all the soft bit metrics are produced based on the traversal that traverses each combination at most once, and reconstructing the values of the data bits carried by the multiple simultaneously-transmitted symbols based on the soft bit metrics.