Patent ID: 7434145

Claim:
A method of operating a receiver apparatus to generate soft values from a set of complex values communicated to said receiver apparatus, the method comprising operating said apparatus to perform the steps of: a) receiving a first set of complex values, said first set of complex values being received complex symbol values obtained from signals communicated over a channel; b) receiving a set of soft bits, said soft bits corresponding to said complex symbol values; c) performing a complex multiplication operation on each of at least some of said first set of complex values to generate at least some elements of a second set of complex values, the multiplication operation performed on each individual one of said set of at least some of said first set of complex values including multiplying said individual complex values by a complex value determined from at least some of said soft bits; d) summing said complex values in said second set of complex values to generate a complex sum, said complex sum being a complex value; e) generating a third set of complex values, said third set having the same number of elements as said first set of complex values, by separately subtracting from said complex sum one of said second set of complex values, each separate subtraction generating one of said third set of complex values; and f) multiplying each element of said first set of complex values with the conjugate of a complex value from said third set to generate a fourth set of complex values, said fourth set having the same number of elements as the first and second sets, said complex values in said fourth set being generated soft symbol values.