Iterative detection for BLAST systems with an arbitrary number of receive antennas

Turbo-coded Vertical Bell Labs Layered Space-Time Architecture (V-BLAST) is a multiple-antenna system employing turbo codes and bit-interleaving to offer flexible rates and high-speed wireless data communications. The conventional detection techniques based on one-shot demodulation and decoding algorithms may suffer poor performance or simply fail when there are fewer receive antennas than transmit antennas or when the multipleinput-multiple-output (MIMO) channel exhibits strong spatial correlations. We propose employing an iterative demodulation and decoding algorithm that solves these problems and greatly extends the applicability of V-BLAST. Simulations demonstrate that iterative V-BLAST offers the best-known performance in a wide range of settings. Through complexity analysis, we show that (a) the incremental computing complexity is small, although additional memory is required, compared with the conventional one-shot maximum likelihood (ML) decoding method, and (b) an iterative algorithm employing generalized sphere decoding will be a low-complexity, memory-reduced, and high-performance solution. We also give extensions to the technique beyond simple V-BLAST. In addition, when feedback from the receiver to the transmitter is available, we illustrate how to adapt code rate, modulation, and the power distribution to take advantage of the channel knowledge. With a combination of the "best in class" receiver performance and the ability to decode V-BLAST transmissions with fewer receive antennas than transmit antennas, the techniques described here can be viewed as key "technology enablers" for BLAST/MIMO in next-generation systems. © 2003 Lucent Technologies Inc