Patent ID: 8750359

Claim:
A method for predicting performance of a Maximum Likelihood Detection (MLD) receiver that receives Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) streams; wherein the MLD receiver comprises an equalizer, a soft demapper, and a bit demapper; the method comprising: exchanging information between the equalizer and the soft demapper in an iterative way to generate iteratively-derived effective signal to noise ratio (SNR) values based on the MIMO streams received by the MLD receiver, comprising: outputting initial SNR values by the equalizer to the soft demapper and to the bit demapper; calculating post-observational variances of said MIMO streams by said soft demapper; providing the post-observational variances from the soft demapper to the equalizer; generating iteratively-derived effective SNR values by the equalizer using the provided post-observational variances from the soft demapper; and outputting iteratively-derived effective SNR values by the equalizer to the soft demapper and the bit demapper, wherein the MLD receiver generates multiple sets of iteratively-derived effective SNR values for different MIMO streams, and the method further comprises: combining the iteratively-derived effective SNR values corresponding to one MIMO stream across the multiple sets of iteratively-derived effective SNR values into a single value representative of the performance across the different MIMO streams.