Patent attributes
Methods and apparatuses for decoding codewords received over a MIMO channel are provided. According to one aspect of the disclosure, a cost function is computed for each constellation point of an Mth rank or spatial layer, and Ncand of those constellation points having minimum cost are preserved as candidate points, where Ncand is a parameter specified to the decoding algorithm. In addition, a cost function may be computed for all possible transitions from the Ncand candidate points of the Mth rank to all possible constellation points of the (M−1)th spatial layer, and Ncand of those transitions having minimum cost are preserved as candidate points. The process is repeated for all spatial layers, resulting in the identification of Ncand candidate codewords and their associated cost functions.
