A scalable MIMO detection architecture with non-sorted multiple-candidate selection

In this paper, we propose a QR-based MIMO detection algorithm and its architecture based on a non-sorted multiple-candidate selection process. The proposed multiple-candidate selection process can mitigate the error propagation problem in the general QR-SIC detection, and therefore the detection probability is increased. This algorithm requires only 24% of the computational complexity of the V-BLAST, which is only slightly larger than that of the conventional QR-SIC algorithm. Besides, the proposed algorithm features high flexibility between the complexity and the performance, and it can even reach the performance of ML detection for the high performance system. Furthermore, the flexible selection approach requires no sorting operation like traditional K-best algorithm. Thus, a simple scalable VLSI architecture can be constructed for different MIMO configurations.