US Patent 7702026 Efficient optimal ML detector

An efficient optimal maximum-likelihood output detector reducing the complexity of demodulation/decoding computations in multiple-input multiple-output communication systems. A plurality of received signals may be combined into a plurality of combined received signals by multiplication of a matrix representing the plurality of received signals with another matrix that meets certain conditions. The plurality of combined received signals may then allow for slicing operations as well as calculation of distance metrics with significantly reduced complexity.