Patent ID: 8132065

Claim:
A hybrid sphere decoding method, comprising: processing received data, by a processing unit, to obtain preliminary parameters; determining top M bf layers to use a breadth-first (BF) search and bottom M df layers to use a depth-first (DF) search, by a configure unit, wherein the breadth-first search is an uninformed search method that expands and examines all nodes of a graph systematically without considering a target until the target is located, and wherein the depth-first search is an uninformed search that progresses by expanding a first child node of a search tree that appears and thus continues deeper until a target node is located or until it hits a node that has no children; and implementing a search process, by a search unit, based on the preliminary parameters, wherein top M bf layers are searched using the breadth-first search and bottom M df layers are searched using the depth-first search.