Channel tracking in a wireless multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system

An apparatus, comprising:

• a matrix equalizer comprising a matrix equalizer computational device, the matrix equalizer computation device computing an equalizer to be applied to signals received via at least one multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) channel when the matrix equalizer computational device is not needed for matrix equalization, wherein the equalizer is initialized to the inverse of a channel estimation matrix;
• a decoder operatively coupled to an output of the matrix equalizer, the decoder to decode an equalized data vector from the matrix equalizer to remove errors from the equalized data vector;
• an encoder operatively coupled to an output of the decoder to re-encode the error-corrected equalized data vector to generate an error corrected estimation of the data vector;
• and
• matrix equalizer update logic operatively coupled to an output of the encoder and to an output of the matrix equalizer, the matrix equalizer update logic to generate an update for an equalization matrix for the matrix equalizer.

A wireless transceiver for transmitting an information signal to a plurality of receiver antennas associated with one or more receivers and for receiving an information signal from a plurality of transmission antennas, the wireless transceiver comprising:

• a plurality of antennas;
• a QR decomposition processor having:
• a Q memory;
• an R memory;
• one or more coordinate rotation digital calculation (CORDIC) engines each having a plurality of CORDIC calculators,
• wherein the QR decomposition processor is configured to decompose an estimate of the channel into an orthogonal matrix Q and an upper triangular matrix R,
• matrix equalization logic to apply a matrix equalizer to a data vector received in a data packet to generate an equalized data vector, the matrix equalizer being based on a plurality of rotation angles representing the conjugate transpose of the orthogonal matrix Q and based on the inverse of the upper triangular matrix R, the matrix equalization logic configured to merge the rotation angles and the upper triangular matrix R in a plurality of steps to generate the matrix equalizer, each step being executed during an unused time period in one or more of the CORDIC engines;
• a Viterbi decoder to decode the equalized data vector to remove errors from the equalized data vector;
• an encoder to re-encode the error-corrected equalized data vector to generate an error corrected estimation of the data vector;
• and
• matrix equalizer update logic to generate an update to the matrix equalizer based on a difference between the error corrected estimation of the data vector and the equalized data vector.