Low-complexity constant multiplication for layer processing in MIMO symbol detection

A method to reduce the hardware complexity of the layer processing units for symbol detectors in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems is presented. In the proposed method, the symbol constellation for each layer is modified virtually so as to reduce the hardware complexity of the constant multipliers required for the layer processing unit. For systems with 64-quadrature-amplitude modulation (QAM), the proposed method reduces the number of arithmetic units implementing constant multipliers by 42.9%, when compared with the conventional method.