An efficient quasi-maximum likelihood decoder for PSK signals

Since exact maximum likelihood (ML) detection is computationally intractable in general, approximate ML approaches are needed to reduce the computation time while maintaining low bit error rate (BER). In this work, we develop an efficient approximate ML decoder for constant modulus signals based on a simple nonlinear programming relaxation. Unlike the existing sphere decoder whose expected complexity is cubic in problem size and whose performance deteriorates with increasing problem size and noise level, our proposed new decoder enjoys a worst case quadratic complexity and scales gracefully with problem dimension and noise level. Our initial testing and analysis suggests that this new decoder is capable of delivering ML like BER performance for PSK signals while requiring substantially lower computational complexity. In this sense, our new decoder is similar to the sphere decoder which is an effective method for QAM signals.