Method and apparatus for soft detection of high order qam symbols in mimo channels

An apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of antennas;
• and
• a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) detector that receives, via the plurality of antennas, a plurality of signals including Q-order quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) symbols, determines, based on linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation using detection of I and Q signs around a target layer, a reduced candidate set including C potential candidates, where C is less than Q, calculates Euclidean distances (EDs) based on the reduced candidate set, and generates log-likelihood ratio (LLR) information based on the calculated EDs.

A system on chip comprising:

• a MIMO detector that receives a plurality of signals including Q-order QAM symbols, determines, based on linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation using detection of I and Q signs around a target layer, a reduced candidate set including C potential candidates, where C is less than Q, calculates Euclidean distances (EDs) based on the reduced candidate set, and generates log-likelihood ratio (LLR) information based on the calculated EDs;
• and
• a decoder that decodes the signals using the LLR information.