Patent ID: 8416873

Claim:
A method of demodulating a received signal in a MIMO system, said method comprising: receiving a signal transmitted from a transmitter having two or more transmit antennas, said received signal containing a desired data stream pre-coded with a known precoder and interference attributable to at least one interfering data stream pre-coded with an unknown precoder; estimating the precoder for the interfering data stream; demodulating the desired data stream using the known precoder of the desired data stream and the estimated precoder for the interfering data stream to reduce said interference and to obtain demodulation symbols corresponding to said desired data stream; wherein estimating the precoder for the interfering data stream comprises testing two or more hypothesized precoders to generate a demodulation performance metric for each hypothesized precoder, and selecting one of the hypothesized precoders as the estimated precoder based on said demodulation performance metrics; and wherein testing two or more hypothesized precoders to generate a demodulation performance metric for each hypothesized precoder comprises demodulating selected test symbols in the desired data stream using each hypothesized precoder and computing, for each hypothesized precoder, a demodulation performance metric for each hypothesized precoder.