Method and apparatus for processing data in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system utilizing channel state information

A method for processing data at a receiver unit in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, comprising:

• receiving a plurality of signals via a plurality of received antennas;
• processing the received signals in accordance with a particular receive processing scheme to provide a plurality of symbol streams corresponding to a plurality of transmitted data streams;
• processing a selected one of the symbol streams to provide a decoded data stream;
• forming a plurality of interference signals based on the decoded data stream;
• deriving a plurality of modified signals based on the received signals and the interference signals;
• performing the processing of the received signals and the selected symbol stream and selectively performing the forming and deriving for one or more iterations, one iteration each transmitted data stream to be decoded, wherein a first iteration is performed on the received signals and each subsequent iteration is performed on the modified signals from a preceding iteration;
• and
• determining channel state information (CSI) indicative of characteristics of a MIMO channel used for transmitting the data steams, wherein the data streams are adaptively processed at a transmitter unit based in part on the CSI.

A method for communicating data from a transmitter unit to a receiver unit in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, comprising:

• at the receiver unit,
• receiving a plurality of signals via a plurality of receive antennas, wherein each received signal comprises a combination of one or more signals transmitted from the transmitter unit,
• processing the received signals in accordance with a successive cancellation receiver processing technique to provide a plurality of decoded data streams transmitted from the transmitter unit,
• determining channel state information (CSI) indicative of characteristics of a MIMO channel used to transmit the data steams, and
• transmitting the CSI back to the transmitter unit;
• and
• at the transmitter unit,
• adaptively processing each data stream prior to transmission over the MIMO channel in accordance with the received CSI.

A multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, comprising:

• a receiver unit comprising
• a plurality of front-end processors configured to process a plurality of received signals to provide a plurality of symbol streams,
• at least one receive processor coupled to the front-end processors and configured to process the symbol streams in accordance with a successive cancellation receiver processing scheme to provide a plurality of decoded data streams, and to further derive channel state information (CSI) indicative of characteristics of a MIMO channel used to transmit the data streams, and
• a transmit data processor operatively coupled to the receive processor and configured to process the CSI for transmission back to the transmitter unit;
• and
• a transmitter unit comprising
• at least one demodulator configured to receive and process one or more signals from the receiver unit to recover the transmitted CSI, and
• a transmit data processor configured to adaptively process data for transmission to the receiver unit based on the recovered CSI.

A receiver unit in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, comprising:

• a plurality of front-end processors configured to process a plurality of received signals to provide a plurality of received symbol streams;
• at least one receive processor coupled to the front-end processors and configured to process the received symbol streams to provide a plurality of decoded data streams, each receive processor including a plurality of processing stages, each stage configured to process input symbol streams to provide a respective decoded data stream and channel state information (CSI) associated with the decoded data stream, and to selectively provide modified symbol streams for a succeeding stage, wherein the input symbol streams for each stage are either the received symbol streams or the modified symbol streams from a preceding stage;
• and
• a transmit processor configured to receive and process the CSI associated with the decoded data streams for transmission from the receiver unit, wherein the data streams are adaptively processed prior to transmission based in part on the CSI.