Soft-Output Sphere Decoding: Performance and Implementation Aspects

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detection algorithms providing soft information for a subsequent channel decoder pose significant implementation challenges due to their high computational complexity. In this paper, we show how sphere decoding can be used as an efficient tool to implement soft-output MIMO detection with flexible trade-offs between computational complexity and (error rate) performance. In particular, we demonstrate that single tree search, ordered QR decomposition, channel matrix regularization, and log-likelihood ratio clipping are the key ingredients for realizing soft-output MIMO detectors with near max-log performance at a computational complexity that is reasonably close to that of hard-output sphere decoding.