A 335Mb/s 3.9mm2 65nm CMOS flexible MIMO detection-decoding engine achieving 4G wireless data rates

In current and future wireless standards, such as WiMAX, 3GPP-LTE or LTE-Advanced, receiver terminals have to support numerous operating modes for each protocol [1], as well as sophisticated transmission techniques, especially enhanced MIMO detection and iterative forward error correction (FEC). MIMO detection and FEC belong to the most computationally complex parts of the receiver-side baseband signal processing chain. Implementations thereof must have low power consumption, but also be able to interact in a flexible and efficient way in the detection-decoding engine, while at the same time not compromising on the challenging throughput and flexibility requirements associated with 4G standards. In this paper, we present a chip implementation of a MIMO sphere detector combined with a flexible FEC engine, realizing a detection-decoding engine in silicon capable of satisfying 4G requirements with a data rate of 335Mb/s.