A unified multi-mode MIMO detector with soft-output

This paper presents an area/energy efficient soft-output MIMO detector that supports the detection of spatial-multiplexing (SM), spatial-diversity (SD), and space-division-multiple-access (SDMA) signals. The developed near-optimal detection algorithms for these three modes share most of the mathematical operations to enable extensive hardware reuse. A unified VLSI architecture is accordingly designed to be reconfigured to different modes. The detector is implemented using a 65-nm CMOS technology with 0.25 mm² core area, representing a 70% hardware-resource saving to state-of-the-art detectors. Operating at 167-MHz clock frequency with 1.2-V supply, the detector achieves 1 Gb/s peak throughput and only consumes 59.3 pJ/b energy.