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 multiple-input-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. (C) 2003 Lucent Technologies Inc.