Patent ID: 8750434

Claim:
A method for demodulating a signal in a communication system that supports one or more modulations schemes for communicating with one or more user equipments (UEs), the method comprising: receiving a signal on a time-frequency resource at a UE, the signal comprising a plurality of spatial layers, the plurality of spatial layers comprising a first spatial layer and a second spatial layer, wherein at least the first spatial layer of the plurality of spatial layers is intended for the UE, wherein the first spatial layer includes a data stream, wherein the data stream is mapped on the first spatial layer; receiving, in a message, an indication of a first modulation scheme that is associated with the first spatial layer, wherein the message does not indicate a modulation scheme associated with the second spatial layer; and calculating a soft value associated with a channel-coded bit of a code word of the data stream based on the first modulation scheme, a second modulation scheme and a third modulation scheme, the second and third modulation schemes representing a hypothesis of the modulation scheme associated with the second spatial layer, and wherein the calculating step comprises calculating the soft value based on a first and a second soft metric, wherein the first soft metric is based on the first and the second modulation scheme and the second soft metric based on the first and the third modulation scheme, wherein the first, the second, and the third modulation schemes are among the one or more modulation schemes supported by the communication system.